No Bees, No Food: Why This Silent Crisis Should Terrify Us All (2 of 2)

Bees aren’t just background noise at a picnic or something to swat at when we’re sipping lemonade. They are the backbone of our food system. They pollinate nearly three-quarters of the fruits, vegetables, and nuts we depend on. Almonds, apples, pumpkins, blueberries, cucumbers—you name it. If bees vanish, so does the abundance on our tables. Think about Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie. Summer without watermelon. Orchards without apples. It sounds impossible, but that’s exactly the road we’re headed down.

Beekeepers across the U.S. have been sounding the alarm. Entire hives collapsing. Colonies that should be thriving in spring lying eerily silent instead. The numbers are devastating: the Bee Informed Partnership reported that in just one recent year, American beekeepers lost nearly half of their colonies. Half. Imagine waking up tomorrow and finding half the dogs and cats in your neighborhood gone. Would we shrug? Would we scroll past?

Experts suspect multiple culprits: pesticides coating the very plants bees feed on, habitat loss turning once-flowering fields into sterile stretches of asphalt, parasites like the Varroa mite draining colonies of life. And climate change adds another cruel twist—flowers blooming out of sync with bees’ life cycles, leaving them hungry in what should be seasons of plenty.

But here’s the part that should keep us all awake: this isn’t happening somewhere “out there.” It’s in our backyards, our farms, our orchards. Beekeepers in the Midwest report opening their hives to find nothing but silence and scattered wings. Families who’ve kept bees for generations describe it like walking into a cemetery. “You expect the buzz,” one beekeeper said, “but instead it’s just… gone.”

And yet, where’s the outrage?

If millions of puppies were dropping dead overnight, Congress would be in emergency session. If beloved pets were wiped out on that scale, news anchors would choke back tears on live TV. But because these victims are bees—tiny, winged, misunderstood—we scroll on by.

That silence, that indifference, is almost as deadly as the pesticides.

Here’s the hard truth: if we don’t act, the day will come when we explain to our grandchildren why their world looks so bare, why their plates are so empty. And “we were too busy watching cat videos” will be a shameful answer.

So yes, I doubt this post will travel the way a puppy rescue video would. But if you’ve read this far, maybe you’ll carry the truth forward. Maybe you’ll plant something. Maybe you’ll push for change. Maybe you’ll prove me wrong.

Because the bees don’t need our sympathy—they need our action. And without them, we’re next.