Humans Are Ruining Honey Bee Sex And The Consequences Could Be Catastrophic

Nat Geo – Fly fast and die young: That’s a male honeybee’s lot in life. With less than a one percent chance of successful reproduction, and a 100 percent chance of dying after mating, male honeybees have it tough.

But recent evidence suggests that human activity—including land development, electromagnetic pollution, and use of neonicotinoid pesticides—is making it even harder for honeybees to reproduce, to the peril of the species.

I learned a lot about honey bees while doing my standard couple hours of research for this story. As it turns out, Rick Pitino has nothing on some male honey bees. Their life’s sole purpose is to fly around and mate, after which they immediately die. They inject their semen into a cavity on the back of a week-old female, who collects semen from dozens of different males and stores it for years to come, using it to fertilize the eggs that will eventually hatch and make up a majority of the loyal members of her hive.

Back to the males though. Apparently when they mount their mates and get to fuckin’, they inject their semen with such speed and ferocity that you can literally hear an audible “POP!” upon completion. Given their size, that’s pretty damn impressive. I guess that’s why we’re often told that size doesn’t matter as much as you’d think. It’s the wizard, not the wand.

All this is good and fun and interesting, but the fact is scientists now believe humans are doing things to the environment that make what’s already a nearly impossible feat in the first place a heck of a lot harder. Between pesticides, power lines, and just overall being completely inconsiderate to how we effect the environment surrounding us, humans are ruining bee sex. I’m talking low sperm counts, weak orgasms, and dead sperm even when they get to break one off. Real devastating shit.

I know I’ve gone on record talking about how I don’t care much for bees. They sting people and it hurts. Maybe I’m maturing though. Maybe my love for honey is slowly overtaking my fear of getting stung after I took a stinger to the eye at a birthday party in pre-K. It doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that if we lose bees, we lose flowers. We lose honey. If bees can’t fly around and fuck and then immediately drop from the sky to their deaths, the world will be worse off because of it.

I’m not saying we need to stop using electricity or start killing beetles that destroy crops 1 by 1 using our hands like a bunch of poor people, but there’s gotta be a better solution than this. Do it for the fucking honey.