Pollinators and Power: A conversation with Professor Dave Goulson

On May 20 it’s the World Bee Day and Slow Food is launching a brand-new Community, Slow Bees!  Slow Bees mission is to promote Seasonal, Local and Organic food for all pollinators. 

On that occasion our US pollinator advocate Terry Oxford interviewed Professor Dave Goulson of Sussex University, a biologist specialized in the ecology and conservation of insects, particularly bumblebees.

“There are a great number of species of bee in the world and many people have no idea at all as you say. I think quite a lot of people mistakenly believe there is just one species of bee and it lives in a hive and it makes honey and it pollinates everything.  But actually it couldn’t be much further from the truth. There are 20,000 species of bee, in which the domestic honeybee is just one. They’re really diverse, they live all over the world, they come in all of colors and shapes, and sizes and they all tend to – they’re all pollinators. Between them they deliver the majority of crop pollination and wildflower pollination, this is the wild bees rather than the honeybees.  But it goes beyond bees, which is something else that isn’t really widely appreciated. There are many, many other insects that are really important pollinators; hover flies and butterflies, and moths and beetles, and wasps and umpteen more. So for example the cacao that gives us chocolate is pollinated by tiny little flies, so if we didn’t have these little flies we wouldn’t have chocolate and how disastrous would that be”.

This is just the beginning of a long interview that you can listen here:
http://urbanbeesf.com/podcast

Help us to spread the voice to remind everyone of the crucial role this animal plays in our ecosystem.
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