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“The bigger levels of bee slavery and exploitation actually happen in the commercial pollination industry.” Dr. Chittka explains the main threats that bees face. “And so these cocktails of pesticides that are used on a very grand scale on pretty much everything, all the vegetative food that we eat, are a major, major threat to bees. At the same time, just the scale of habitat loss is staggering in many countries, including in the UK. We’ve lost close to 100% of wild, unadulterated nature over the last century. There is also a number of diseases that, as a result of people shipping around bees, for example, for commercial pollination purposes around the globe, have brought diseases into areas where they weren’t previously present and where the bees don’t actually have any natural defenses against them.” In 2019, Dr. Chittka released a collaborative album inspired by bees entitled “Strange Flowers.”In “The Mind of a Bee,” Dr. Chittka shares an important message. “I think people are generally aware that bees are useful for us as pollinators, so we should conserve them. But for me, they’re also creatures with fascinating, alternative, perceptual worlds, so wholly different minds.” “And yes, to the extent that people can revert this trend, and at least make some of the planet’s surface available again for wild things to thrive, I think that can only be a good thing.” Dr. Chittka emphasizes that vegan organic farming is kind to the insects. “I think some of what needs to be done is that the government allocates its subsidies more differentially to produce that’s ethically produced. So even if people reduce pesticide usage, even if people reduce the size of their fields, the extent to which there’s just one crop growing year in, year out, every little helps. I think we don’t have to look to any highly modern, innovative, new forms of farming. We’ve had that system that you, or we, dream about just a few decades ago, and all it takes is reactivating some of that historic knowledge: how to farm ethically, with fewer pesticides, and still be reasonably productive.”
