By Heather Callaghan

Hope you are not hungry while you read this. A Christmas dinner without bees would be a minimalist lifestyle in the worst way possible. According to University of Reading researchers, in just two decades, worldwide honeybee populations have been cut in half. While that’s enough to make anyone spit out their honey lemon water, keep in mind that honeybees are only one facet of the whole picture of pollination.

Consider this via Tree Hugger:

According to the USDA, in the United States the total number of managed honey bee colonies has decreased from 5 million in the 1940s to only 2.5 million today. Meanwhile, University of Bristol research claims that honeybees and other pollinators are responsible for 80 percent of all plant species in Europe, including fruits and vegetables.

Plan Bee Ltd is an environmental marketing firm attempting to create massive buzz about saving the bees – and food for the world.

They’ve created an algorithm – and subsequent imagery – to show exactly the kind of impact that pollinators have on our food supply.

Hope you had a heavy breakfast…

As you can see, Christmas dinner is now that of the Cratchit family in A Christmas Carol.

Most of the food is simply extinct. The adequate feast is now a paltry snack. Even the centerpieces and candles are gone! (Assuming they are beeswax.)

Warren Bader, CEO and Founder of Plan Bee Ltd said:

They help to pollinate a third of the food that we eat, and at Christmas that would mean no cranberry sauce, no parsnips or carrots, no cloves or cherries for your Christmas pudding and Christmas cake, no apples for your mince pies and no holly. But perhaps most importantly, love them or loath them, no Brussels sprouts!

One wonders if a turkey would even exist considering that the diet of poultry in the U.S. consists of grain feed. Oils would eventually go by the wayside without bees, too.

Without our precious pollinators, which are not just bees but are tens of thousands of species, holidays would be bleak and worse yet, much more of the world would go to bed hungry on a nightly basis until starvation. It’s time to think about diversity and doing everything possible to support life – no more listening to excuses from pesticide makers and the like.

If you’re interested in learning more about what individuals, towns and businesses can do to help – Plan Bee is an interactive resource.

This article (What Christmas Dinner Looks Like Without the Bees) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Heather Callaghan and Natural Blaze.com.

Heather Callaghan is an independent researcher, natural health blogger and food freedom activist. You can see her work at NaturalBlaze.com. Like at Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.