Here is an article that appeared some months ago in Dorset BKA's magazine  
'Honeycraft'.
 
Chris
 
 
Albert  Einstein said….. 

“If the bees  disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would have 
only 4 years of  life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more 
plants, no more animals,  no more man” 
Which  Albert Einstein was that?  It  certainly wasn’t the famous 
theoretical physicist who devised his theory of  relativity through what he described 
as a ‘thought experiment’.  He died in 1955 but the apocryphal  saying 
first was mentioned in January 1994 when the Union Nationale d’Apiculture  
Francais (French Bee Farmers) were staging a protest at  Brussels. 
Bee that  as it may, let’s follow the great Albert’s example and devise a 
thought  experiment.  Imagine, if you will, a  world where there are no 
honeybees or other Apis species.   What shall we call it?  How about ‘America’? 
  
a) Could  pollination happen in America if there were no bees? b) Would the 
twin  continents be devoid of plants, animals and man? c) How else would 
pollination  happen? d) What plants could survive without bees aiding their 
sex lives? e)  What animals would there be and, of course: f) How could man 
exist in these  circumstances? 
Answers:  a) Yes; b) no; c) humming birds, butterflies, wind, other 
insects,  self-pollination, tuberous reproduction; d) potatoes, maize, tobacco, 
tomatoes,  Brazil nuts, vines, conifer forests, prairie grasslands, to name but 
a few e)  buffalo by the million, sloth, cougar, bear of all sorts, fish, 
birds of all  sorts, wolves, monkeys, caribou and countless others f) Eskimos 
even today live  largely in a bee-free environment and always have done.  
Other humans have done so too, spreading  south after having crossed the 
land/ice bridge from Siberia thousands of years  ago. It is true that the recent 
(last 500 years) past migrants have put pressure  on the environment, 
probably more so in the most recent 10% of that time than  the remainder added 
together through use of agri-chemicals and other pollutants,  but even so it 
is self evident that mankind can exist there, possibly with the  assistance 
of the honeybees that they introduced. Now, whether civilisation will  ever 
evolve there is an entirely different question. 
So the  alleged Einstein statement is completely ridiculous and poppycock! 

Chris  Slade.

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