Bees have coexisted with us for over a millennium. Their name remains a mystery: NPR

When Kendal Sager lifts the highest of her beehive, tens of hundreds of bees waggle throughout the honeycomb — their cells crammed with brilliant yellow, orange and pink pollen collected from flowers in Sager’s neighborhood.

Sager, a California grasp beekeeper, mentioned bees do excess of produce that candy substance: they pollinate crops for tons of of varieties of nuts, vegetables and fruit.

“Even if you don’t like bees themselves, you have bees to thank for the food on your table,” she mentioned.

This Wednesday is World Bee Day, which was established by the United Nations in 2018 to lift consciousness about the necessity to shield the bugs. So this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week appears on the thriller behind bees’ buzzy name — and why they want extra of our consideration than ever.

Kendal Sager can be the founding father of Sager Family Farm, which supplies instructional “reverse” subject journeys the place bees go to the scholars.

Alan Nakkash for NPR

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Alan Nakkash for NPR

Why the origin of ‘bee’ is tough to hint

Doug Harper, founder and editor of Etymonline.coman etymology dictionary, mentioned that not like many phrases, the that means of “bee” has just about remained the identical over time.

“A word like ‘bee’ has always been ‘bee,’ as far back as you can trace it,” he mentioned.

According to Harper, “bee” got here from the Old English “beo.” Some poets previously would use the time period “beowulf”, that means “a wolf to bees,” to explain bears.

But the precise origin of “bee” itself remains a linguistic thriller largely due to the insect’s lengthy historical past on the planet, Harper mentioned. Bees have existed for tens of millions of years, and beekeeping has been a follow for over a millennia.

“The words that have been here forever, we’ll never know probably,” Harper mentioned.

An engraving of varied bees engraved by J. Bishop, circa 1800.

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One concept is that it pertains to the buzzing sound that the insect makes, he added. Throughout historical past, different phrases have been used to consult with the pollinator, just like the Latin phrase “apis” which led to “apiary,” or the locations the place beehives are stored.

But “bee” hardened like none different. It now belongs to an array of phrases and idioms: making a “beeline,” being a “busy bee,” minding your personal beeswax. That’s a testomony to how people have carefully watched and appreciated bees for centuries, in accordance with Harper.

“When I look at words like that, they don’t even look like words. They look like landscape. They’re so ancient,” he mentioned. “Those things are sort of rare and valuable just for that.”

The bees usually are not all proper

Over the years, it is develop into tough to maintain bee colonies alive. That was most obvious final 12 months, when business beekeepers within the US reported shedding practically 56% of their honeybee colonies — the biggest decline because the annual US beekeeping survey started in 2010.

“The worry is that at some point they won’t be able to keep up anymore,” mentioned Mateo Kaiser, a fifth-generation beekeeper in California and the managing director of Swarmed, a useful resource for beekeepers.

There’s a variety of elements behind final 12 months’s large collapse, together with habitat loss, publicity to harsh pesticides and a tiny, however damaging, parasite often called the Varroa mitewhich arrived within the US from Asia within the Nineteen Eighties.

Bees are extraordinarily delicate to adjustments within the local weather, in accordance with Mateo Kaiser, who’s a fifth-generation beekeeper in California.

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More broadly, bees are extraordinarily delicate to adjustments within the local weather, in accordance with Kaiser. If the spring season is just too dry, flowers and bushes reduce on nectar manufacturing, inflicting bees to go hungry. If there’s a sudden chilly snap within the spring, it may set bees again of their progress for the entire season, Kaiser added.

“As the climate changes and becomes less predictable, it becomes difficult for beekeepers to know what to expect and to make sure that they’re taking the best possible care of their bees,” he mentioned.

Each 12 months, bees make tens of millions of journeys throughout the nation. Their travels not solely pollinate crops and produce honey, but in addition present perception into how the atmosphere is faring.

“Anything the bees are coming into contact with, it’s affecting them and it’s telling us something about the health of our communities, and how local biodiversity and ecosystems are being impacted,” he mentioned.

As a outcome, Sager mentioned bees have made her extra attuned to the climate and when flowers are blooming. That’s yet one more method that bees are making an affect on people.

“So even if you don’t care about the bees,” she mentioned, “it’s pointing at a lot of other issues that may cause problems for everyone and other species.”