{"id":1443,"date":"2020-08-21T06:56:43","date_gmt":"2020-08-21T06:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thepoetryofscience.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=1443"},"modified":"2020-08-21T06:56:43","modified_gmt":"2020-08-21T06:56:43","slug":"the-tragedy-of-the-bees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/thepoetryofscience\/1443\/the-tragedy-of-the-bees\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tragedy of the Bees"},"content":{"rendered":"

Weighed down by the delights
\nof an afternoon\u2019s jumbled scavenging
\nyou zigzag drunkenly across the sky;
\ntumbling through monocultures
\nto the wild abandon
\nof your uncultivated home.<\/p>\n

Squatting in the corner of
\nFarmer John (or was it Giles)\u2019s field,
\nyou hear him exclaim:
\n\u201cThose bees will be the end of me,
\nThey\u2019re such ungrateful tenants;
\nRoaming when they could just stay home,
\nWith no remorse or penance!\u201d<\/p>\n

You let out a gentle chortle
\nat farmer John \/ Giles (maybe Jim?);
\nyour disregard for boundaries
\nmatched only by your apathy
\nfor gross domestication.<\/p>\n

The drone (you snort) continues:
\n\u201cIt\u2019s so unfair I take the hit,
\nI\u2019ve emptied out my pockets;
\nNo longer will I lay my field,
\nAs others reap my profits.\u201d<\/p>\n

You sadly shake your head
\nthat it has come to this:
\npartitioning private benefits
\nas The Man shakes you down
\nfor every flower shook in his name.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A wild bee feeding on a Lantana camara flower (Image Credit: Alvesgaspar; CC BY-SA).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This poem is inspired by recent research<\/a>, which has found that compensating those farmers who provide habitats for wild bees will lead to benefits for all.<\/p>\n

The tragedy of the commons describes how shared environmental resources are overused and eventually depleted, normally as a direct result of individuals acting in self-interest for the greatest short-term personal gain, rather than considering the needs of the wider community. Wild bees provide an excellent example of this problem in action. Bees are needed to pollinate crops and creating wild bee habitat on farms can be as simple as letting a small area of land remain wild. However, bees do not adhere to human-made boundaries, with many bee species foraging 100\u20131,000 m from nest sites, meaning that bees that have their habitat in one field will likely pollinate the crops in another. As such there is little incentive for farmers and other landowners to create space on their own lands if the costs are greater than the benefits they’d receive from the bees, which means that few farmers choose to sacrifice land for bee habitat, resulting in fewer bees and ultimately fewer crops for all landowners.<\/p>\n

In this study, researchers found that if 40% of landowners were to provide space for wild bee habitat, those landowners would themselves lose about $1 Million through the loss of arable farmland, but that doing so would generate nearly $2.5 Million for their neighbours, via the pollination of additional crops. If all of the landowners were able to work together, so that those who benefitted from the bees compensated those who provided them with a habitat, then the tragedy of the commons could potentially be averted, with net gains for everyone.<\/p>\n