This is our life with bees, and this is our life without bees. Bees are the most important pollinators of our fruits and vegetables and flowers and crops like alfalfa hay that feed our farm animals. More than one third of the world's crop production is dependent on bee pollination.
有蜂嘅日子係咁 無蜂嘅日子就會變成咁 蜂係最重要嘅傳粉者 幫水果、蔬菜、花卉同農作物 例如餵家畜嘅紫花乾草 傳花粉 超過三分一嘅世界農作物 需要靠蜂傳播花粉
But the ironic thing is that bees are not out there pollinating our food intentionally. They're out there because they need to eat. Bees get all of the protein they need in their diet from pollen and all of the carbohydrates they need from nectar. They're flower-feeders, and as they move from flower to flower, basically on a shopping trip at the local floral mart, they end up providing this valuable pollination service. In parts of the world where there are no bees, or where they plant varieties that are not attractive to bees, people are paid to do the business of pollination by hand. These people are moving pollen from flower to flower with a paintbrush. Now this business of hand pollination is actually not that uncommon. Tomato growers often pollinate their tomato flowers with a hand-held vibrator. Now this one's the tomato tickler. (Laughter) Now this is because the pollen within a tomato flower is held very securely within the male part of the flower, the anther, and the only way to release this pollen is to vibrate it. So bumblebees are one of the few kinds of bees in the world that are able to hold onto the flower and vibrate it, and they do this by shaking their flight muscles at a frequency similar to the musical note C. So they vibrate the flower, they sonicate it, and that releases the pollen in this efficient swoosh, and the pollen gathers all over the fuzzy bee's body, and she takes it home as food. Tomato growers now put bumblebee colonies inside the greenhouse to pollinate the tomatoes because they get much more efficient pollination when it's done naturally and they get better quality tomatoes.
諷刺嘅係 蜂無專登為人類糧食傳播花粉 佢地之所以出動,係因為要搵食 花粉可以為蜂提供所有嘅蛋白質 而花蜜就完全俾到佢哋 所需嘅碳水化合物 花係佢地嘅食物 佢哋採花嘅過程 就好似喺花市買花一樣 逛緊嗰陣,仲做埋有值錢嘅傳粉服務 喺無蜂嘅地方 或者無植物啱蜂心水嘅地方 只能夠俾錢請人做人工授粉 授粉需要工人用板刷,逐棵花刷 人工授粉行業,依家其實好普遍 番茄果農成日用手提震動器 去幫茄花傳粉 呢個就喺番茄搔癢器 (笑聲) 用佢嘅原因係因為 茄花嘅花粉埋喺花嘅深處 雄蕊入邊,即係花粉囊邊 唯一將佢整出嚟嘅方法 就係震動花粉囊 世上只有幾種蜂可以幫茄花傳粉 熊蜂係其中一種 佢地可以抓住朵花,顫動飛行肌 發出類似 C 音頻率嘅聲波 咁樣,透過將花震動,將花粉震出嚟 黐喺毛茸茸嘅熊蜂身上 然後熊蜂帶返屋企開餐 依家,茄農將熊蜂竇放喺溫室入邊 用佢哋幫番茄傳粉 咁樣傳粉有效率又自然 番茄品質又更加好
So there's other, maybe more personal reasons, to care about bees. There's over 20,000 species of bees in the world, and they're absolutely gorgeous. These bees spend the majority of their life cycle hidden in the ground or within a hollow stem and very few of these beautiful species have evolved highly social behavior like honeybees.
所以,我哋有更多理由去關注蜂群 世界上,有超過兩萬種蜂 呢樣嘢絕對係了不起 呢啲蜂大半生喺地底 或者中空嘅植物莖部生活 只有極少數好似蜜蜂咁 進化出高度嘅社會行為
Now honeybees tend to be the charismatic representative for the other 19,900-plus species because there's something about honeybees that draws people into their world. Humans have been drawn to honeybees since early recorded history, mostly to harvest their honey, which is an amazing natural sweetener.
依家,蜜蜂係 其他一萬九千幾種蜂嘅代表 蜜蜂確實有佢哋引人注目嘅魅力 自從有歷史文獻開始 人類就已經留意蜜蜂 主要因為可以 喺佢哋身上提取到蜂蜜 蜂蜜係天然嘅甜味劑
I got drawn into the honeybee world completely by a fluke. I was 18 years old and bored, and I picked up a book in the library on bees and I spent the night reading it. I had never thought about insects living in complex societies. It was like the best of science fiction come true. And even stranger, there were these people, these beekeepers, that loved their bees like they were family, and when I put down the book, I knew I had to see this for myself. So I went to work for a commercial beekeeper, a family that owned 2,000 hives of bees in New Mexico. And I was permanently hooked.
而我對蜜蜂產生興趣完全係意外 當時我 18 歲,覺得好無聊 喺圖書館睇到一本關於蜂類嘅書 嗰晚,我睇咗本書 之前我從未諗過 昆蟲可以有咁複雜嘅社會組織 就好似一本超精彩科幻小說嘅真實版 更離奇嘅係 有班養蜂人佢哋好錫自己啲蜂 就好似屋企人一樣 當我讀完本書,我決定要親身去睇 於是,我去咗幫一個養蜂商人打工 佢成家喺新墨西哥州,擁有兩千個蜂巢 從此,我同蜜蜂結下不解之緣
Honeybees can be considered a super-organism, where the colony is the organism and it's comprised of 40,000 to 50,000 individual bee organisms. Now this society has no central authority. Nobody's in charge. So how they come to collective decisions, and how they allocate their tasks and divide their labor, how they communicate where the flowers are, all of their collective social behaviors are mindblowing. My personal favorite, and one that I've studied for many years, is their system of healthcare. So bees have social healthcare. So in my lab, we study how bees keep themselves healthy. For example, we study hygiene, where some bees are able to locate and weed out sick individuals from the nest, from the colony, and it keeps the colony healthy. And more recently, we've been studying resins that bees collect from plants. So bees fly to some plants and they scrape these very, very sticky resins off the leaves, and they take them back to the nest where they cement them into the nest architecture where we call it propolis. We've found that propolis is a natural disinfectant. It's a natural antibiotic. It kills off bacteria and molds and other germs within the colony, and so it bolsters the colony health and their social immunity. Humans have known about the power of propolis since biblical times. We've been harvesting propolis out of bee colonies for human medicine, but we didn't know how good it was for the bees. So honeybees have these remarkable natural defenses that have kept them healthy and thriving for over 50 million years.
蜜蜂唔單止係生物 每一個蜂群仲係一個個體 每個蜂群通常由四到五萬隻蜜蜂組成 但個體冇首領,無人話事 佢哋點樣行集體決定 點樣分配任務同勞工 點樣傳達採花地點嘅信息 佢哋所有社會行為都令人興奮不已 我用咗好多年研究自己 最鍾意嘅蜂群保健系統 無錯,蜜蜂都有保健 我嘅實驗室研究蜜蜂點樣維持健康 例如,我哋研究衛生學 發現蜜蜂可以搵到同分開 蜂巢裏邊有病嘅成員 確保蜂群健康 最近,我哋研究緊 蜜蜂喺植物度收集返來嘅樹脂 蜜蜂會喺某啲樹嘅樹葉度 刮出癡蠟蠟嘅樹脂 然後帶返蜂巢 鋪落個巢度 我哋叫佢做蜂膠 大家都知道蜂膠係一種天然殺菌劑 又係天然抗生素 佢可以將蜂群入邊嘅細菌、霉菌 仲有其他病菌殺死 確保蜂群健康,增強群體免疫力 人類自從聖經年代 就已經知道蜂膠嘅效用 我哋一直採集蜂巢入邊嘅蜂膠做藥物 但從來唔知蜂膠對蜂群有幾重要 蜜蜂憑藉呢種出色嘅天然防禦物 健康繁盛咗超過五千萬年 直到七年前
So seven years ago, when honeybee colonies were reported to be dying en masse, first in the United States, it was clear that there was something really, really wrong. In our collective conscience, in a really primal way, we know we can't afford to lose bees. So what's going on? Bees are dying from multiple and interacting causes, and I'll go through each of these. The bottom line is, bees dying reflects a flowerless landscape and a dysfunctional food system.
美國首次報導有大量蜂群死亡 我就知道發生咗好大問題 好簡單,從我哋嘅認知 我哋知道人類 承受唔到冇蜜蜂嘅後果 咁究竟發生咗咩一回事? 蜜蜂死於多種互相影響嘅因素 陣間我會逐一講解 重點係蜜蜂死亡 反映咗個環境無花 同埋食物系統運作有問題
Now we have the best data on honeybees, so I'll use them as an example. In the United States, bees in fact have been in decline since World War II. We have half the number of managed hives in the United States now compared to 1945. We're down to about two million hives of bees, we think. And the reason is, after World War II, we changed our farming practices. We stopped planting cover crops. We stopped planting clover and alfalfa, which are natural fertilizers that fix nitrogen in the soil, and instead we started using synthetic fertilizers. Clover and alfalfa are highly nutritious food plants for bees. And after World War II, we started using herbicides to kill off the weeds in our farms. Many of these weeds are flowering plants that bees require for their survival. And we started growing larger and larger crop monocultures. Now we talk about food deserts, places in our cities, neighborhoods that have no grocery stores. The very farms that used to sustain bees are now agricultural food deserts, dominated by one or two plant species like corn and soybeans. Since World War II, we have been systematically eliminating many of the flowering plants that bees need for their survival. And these monocultures extend even to crops that are good for bees, like almonds. Fifty years ago, beekeepers would take a few colonies, hives of bees into the almond orchards, for pollination, and also because the pollen in an almond blossom is really high in protein. It's really good for bees. Now, the scale of almond monoculture demands that most of our nation's bees, over 1.5 million hives of bees, be transported across the nation to pollinate this one crop. And they're trucked in in semi-loads, and they must be trucked out, because after bloom, the almond orchards are a vast and flowerless landscape.
我會攞我哋宜家 最好嘅蜜蜂數據做例子︰ 美國嘅蜜蜂數量 由二戰之後就一直減少 對比 1945 年 美國現時嘅蜂箱數量只剩返一半 我哋估計剩返二百萬個蜂箱 原因係,二戰之後我哋改變耕種方式 唔再種「遮蓋作物」 好似三葉草同苜蓿咁 佢哋都係天然嘅土壤固氮肥料 但係宜家大家都用化肥代替 三葉草同苜蓿都係蜂類嘅高級營養品 二戰後,我哋開始 用除草劑清理田間雜草 但好多雜草都係開花植物 蜂要靠佢哋維生 同時,單一作物嘅種植規模越來越大 我哋宜家講「食物荒漠」 正係指城市裏邊、社區附近 買唔到多款食物 蜂類以前覓食嘅農田 今日變咗「食物荒漠」 得返一兩種農作物喺度大量種植 好似粟米同大豆咁 自從二戰之後,我哋一直喺度有系統 剷除好多蜂類賴以為生嘅開花植物 單一大規模種植甚至包括杏仁 呢啲對蜂類有益嘅植物 50 年前,養蜂人會將 一啲蜂巢擺喺杏仁果園 用嚟傳播杏仁花粉 亦都因為杏仁花粉有好多蛋白質 對蜂類好有益 依家,杏仁嘅種植規模 大到需要動用全國大部份嘅蜂嚟幫手 超過一百五十萬個蜂箱 需要千里迢迢咁運 就係為咗幫杏仁傳花粉 蜂巢用貨車運去 之後又要用貨車運走 因為花期過後 成個果園就係一個無花嘅世界
Bees have been dying over the last 50 years, and we're planting more crops that need them. There has been a 300 percent increase in crop production that requires bee pollination.
蜂類喺過去五十年間不斷減少 但需要佢哋傳粉嘅農作物 數量一直增加緊 增幅達到三倍 跟住講下殺蟲劑
And then there's pesticides. After World War II, we started using pesticides on a large scale, and this became necessary because of the monocultures that put out a feast for crop pests. Recently, researchers from Penn State University have started looking at the pesticide residue in the loads of pollen that bees carry home as food, and they've found that every batch of pollen that a honeybee collects has at least six detectable pesticides in it, and this includes every class of insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, and even inert and unlabeled ingredients that are part of the pesticide formulation that can be more toxic than the active ingredient. This small bee is holding up a large mirror. How much is it going to take to contaminate humans?
二戰之後,單一種植引發蟲害氾濫 以致必須大規模 用殺蟲劑嚟控制蟲害 最近,賓夕法尼亞州立大學嘅研究人員 對蜜蜂帶返巢嘅花粉 量度殺蟲劑殘留量 發現每一批蜜蜂收集嘅花粉 都起碼有六種農藥 包括各類殺蟲劑、除草劑、殺菌劑 甚至包括無標示嘅佐劑 佐劑係殺蟲配方嘅成份 毒性分分鐘比活躍成份勁 蜜蜂令我哋問︰ 農藥幾時會毒害到人體?
One of these class of insecticides, the neonicontinoids, is making headlines around the world right now. You've probably heard about it. This is a new class of insecticides. It moves through the plant so that a crop pest, a leaf-eating insect, would take a bite of the plant and get a lethal dose and die. If one of these neonics, we call them, is applied in a high concentration, such as in this ground application, enough of the compound moves through the plant and gets into the pollen and the nectar, where a bee can consume, in this case, a high dose of this neurotoxin that makes the bee twitch and die. In most agricultural settings, on most of our farms, it's only the seed that's coated with the insecticide, and so a smaller concentration moves through the plant and gets into the pollen and nectar, and if a bee consumes this lower dose, either nothing happens or the bee becomes intoxicated and disoriented and she may not find her way home. And on top of everything else, bees have their own set of diseases and parasites. Public enemy number one for bees is this thing. It's called varroa destructor. It's aptly named. It's this big, blood-sucking parasite that compromises the bee's immune system and circulates viruses.
其中一類殺蟲劑叫敵敵畏 全世界新聞都講緊佢 你可能都聽過 佢係新型殺蟲劑 植物吸收咗佢之後 只要食葉嘅昆蟲咬植物塊葉一啖 就足以致命 如果任何一種敵敵畏高濃度咁用 就會好似頭先講到咁 當足夠劑量嘅敵敵畏 去到植物嘅花粉同花蜜 而蜜蜂食用嘅話 高劑量嘅神經毒素會令蜜蜂抽搐同死亡 美國大多數農場裏邊 只有種子會噴咗殺蟲劑 所以植物嘅殺蟲劑濃度都會低啲 花粉同花蜜嘅殺蟲劑都冇咁多 蜜蜂如果攝取咁少嘅殺蟲劑 佢一係無事 一係因為中毒而簜失路,返唔到屋企 除此之外,蜂都有自己嘅病同寄生蟲 佢哋頭號敵人係狄氏瓦蟎 呢個名好啱佢 因為狄氏瓦蟎係 一種體型大嘅吸血寄生蟲 會削弱蜂嘅免疫系統,同時傳播病毒
Let me put this all together for you. I don't know what it feels like to a bee to have a big, bloodsucking parasite running around on it, and I don't know what it feels like to a bee to have a virus, but I do know what it feels like when I have a virus, the flu, and I know how difficult it is for me to get to the grocery store to get good nutrition. But what if I lived in a food desert? And what if I had to travel a long distance to get to the grocery store, and I finally got my weak body out there and I consumed, in my food, enough of a pesticide, a neurotoxin, that I couldn't find my way home? And this is what we mean by multiple and interacting causes of death.
等我將蜂嘅困難總結一下 我唔知一隻被大隻吸血蟲 躝住全身嘅蜂會有咩感覺 亦唔知佢感染咗病毒嘅感覺 我凈係知自己有流感嗰時 連去士多買嘢食,補充營養嘅力都無 更何況,我仲身處「食物荒漠」? 我仲要行好遠嘅路先去到士多 去到嗰時,我買嘢食 但點知食物裏面有殺蟲劑同神經毒素 令我搵唔到返屋企嘅路 以上就係我哋所講 蜂類死亡嘅多種關聯因素
And it's not just our honeybees. All of our beautiful wild species of bees are at risk, including those tomato-pollinating bumblebees. These bees are providing backup for our honeybees. They're providing the pollination insurance alongside our honeybees. We need all of our bees.
唔止蜜蜂,所有野生蜂都喺危險邊緣 包括幫番茄傳粉嘅熊蜂 佢哋係蜜蜂嘅後援 佢哋保障花粉傳播 所以,我哋需要各種蜂
So what are we going to do? What are we going to do about this big bee bummer that we've created? It turns out, it's hopeful. It's hopeful. Every one of you out there can help bees in two very direct and easy ways. Plant bee-friendly flowers, and don't contaminate these flowers, this bee food, with pesticides. So go online and search for flowers that are native to your area and plant them. Plant them in a pot on your doorstep. Plant them in your front yard, in your lawns, in your boulevards. Campaign to have them planted in public gardens, community spaces, meadows. Set aside farmland. We need a beautiful diversity of flowers that blooms over the entire growing season, from spring to fall. We need roadsides seeded in flowers for our bees, but also for migrating butterflies and birds and other wildlife. And we need to think carefully about putting back in cover crops to nourish our soil and nourish our bees. And we need to diversify our farms. We need to plant flowering crop borders and hedge rows to disrupt the agricultural food desert and begin to correct the dysfunctional food system that we've created.
咁要點做? 我哋為蜂類整咗咁大麻煩 點先可以補到鑊? 原來仲有希望 有兩個簡單直接嘅辦法可以幫到佢哋 首先,種蜂鍾意嘅花 唔好用殺蟲劑 唔好污染啲花 喺網上查你住緊地方嘅本地花卉品種 然後將佢哋種喺門口嘅花盤、前院 草地同馬路旁邊 喺公園、社區空間同公眾草坪 舉辦種花活動 唔講農田,我哋要種唔同品種嘅花 令成個生長季節,春天到秋天都有花開 馬路兩邊都需要為種花 唔止為咗蜜蜂 仲為咗遷徙中嘅蝴蝶、候鳥 同其他野生動物而種 亦都係時候認真諗下 重新種返「遮蓋植物」 令土地增肥之餘 又可以養肥蜜蜂 農場都需要多樣化種植 我哋要喺田嘅邊緣種開花農作物 同做灌木籬牆 咁樣可以間斷食物荒漠 而且,要開始糾正 人類一手造成嘅食物系統紊亂
So maybe it seems like a really small countermeasure to a big, huge problem -- just go plant flowers -- but when bees have access to good nutrition, we have access to good nutrition through their pollination services. And when bees have access to good nutrition, they're better able to engage their own natural defenses, their healthcare, that they have relied on for millions of years. So the beauty of helping bees this way, for me, is that every one of us needs to behave a little bit more like a bee society, an insect society, where each of our individual actions can contribute to a grand solution, an emergent property, that's much greater than the mere sum of our individual actions. So let the small act of planting flowers and keeping them free of pesticides be the driver of large-scale change.
相比起大嘅難題 種花可能只係一個小小嘅解決方法 但係,如果蜂類營養充足 佢哋就可以傳播好嘅花粉 我哋咁先可以有好嘅食物 而且,好營養可以鞏固 佢哋嘅天然抵抗力 同蜂類賴以為生過百年嘅保健系統 我覺得,咁樣幫蜂類嘅好處係 每個人都可以好似 蜜蜂社會裏面嘅一隻蜂 團結就是力量,每個人付出少少 再大嘅問題都可以解決到 所以,依家就等我哋開始種花 唔加任何農藥 一齊帶領改變呢片大地嘅顏色 我代表蜂類多謝你哋
On behalf of the bees, thank you.
(掌聲)
(Applause)
Chris Anderson:多謝 想問一個問題
Chris Anderson: Thank you. Just a quick question. The latest numbers on the die-off of bees, is there any sign of things bottoming out? What's your hope/depression level on this?
從最近蜜蜂死亡嘅數字睇 蜂類嘅數量有冇觸底反彈? 你對數字樂觀定失望? 講者:嗯
Maria Spivak: Yeah. At least in the United States, an average of 30 percent of all bee hives are lost every winter. About 20 years ago, we were at a 15-percent loss. So it's getting precarious.
至少喺美國 平均每個冬季就冇咗三成蜂巢 大約喺廿年前,跌幅係 15% 所以,宜家處境更危急
CA: That's not 30 percent a year, that's -- MS: Yes, thirty percent a year.
- Chris Anderson:唔係三成嗎? - 講者︰無錯係三成
CA: Thirty percent a year. MS: But then beekeepers are able to divide their colonies and so they can maintain the same number, they can recuperate some of their loss.
Chris Anderson:係嘅三成 講者︰不過養蜂嘅人 可以將蜜蜂分到空嘅巢度 咁樣,數字就會一樣
We're kind of at a tipping point. We can't really afford to lose that many more. We need to be really appreciative of all the beekeepers out there. Plant flowers.
損失就減少咗 但目前正係臨界點 蜂巢已經唔可以再少 跟著落嚟,真係好希望大家都會種花
CA: Thank you.
Chris Anderson:唔該曬
(Applause)
(掌聲)