If you are a constant visitor of the internet you may have been hearing for years now that the bees are dying at an alarming. If that is true we should all be alarmed. Bees are an important pollinators. They pollinate almost one-third of our crops including most fruits and non-grain vegetables. Given how important bees are it is no wonder why the Internet went crazy when it found out that bees were put on the endangered species list.
I’m sure y’all seen the memes going around. Some of them are pretty CT.
#SavetheBees even started trending on Twitter.
The problem with these memes are that they are not accurate. Yes some bees were put on the endangered species list but they were Hawaiian bees. Not U.S honeybees who are currently experiencing a twenty year high in population.
As NPR reported on October 3rd, The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has given endangered status to seven species of yellow-faced bees native to the islands. These are "the first bees in the country to be protected under the Endangered Species Act," according to the Xerces Society, which advocated for the new designation.
These bees are the only bees native to Hawaii. The Federal Registrar states that yellow-faced bees are known "for their yellow-to-white facial markings." They almost look like wasp except for their "plumose [branched] hairs on the body that are longest on the sides of the thorax, which readily distinguish them from wasps."
So unless your memes are talking about Hawaiian yellow faced bees do not posts them on Facebook. Nor should you post them on Twitter with the hashtag SavetheBees. It is important that we recognize which bees are endangered and which are not so we can devote are resources to where they are actually needed.