Bees might be small, but their impact is massive. At the Greater Cleveland Chamber of Commerce’s latest luncheon on Thursday, June 6, that message was delivered by Paul Fagala, procurement manager at The Bee Supply, as the guest speaker. Fagala shared important information about bees and their vital role in the environment and food system.
Fagala began by asking the audience, “How many of you like to eat?”
He challenged everyone to think about how often they consider bees when sitting down to a meal.
“How many of you looked at that food and thought, ‘Oh yeah, I’m so grateful that we have bees so I can have this food?’” said Fagala.
Most people do not think about the role of bees, but Fagala warned, “Without bees, we are going to be in a lot of trouble.”
He shared that bees pollinate more than 90 different crops, including blueberries, cranberries, blackberries, most squashes, many melons, onions, garlic and even tea.
“Without these, we couldn’t survive as a civilization,” Fagala explained.
He added that many experts believe if honey bees disappeared, humans could face extinction in as little as two to four years.
“That timeline is a pretty dire scenario,” said Fagala.
Fagala showed a video featuring Blake Shook, an owner of Texas Bee Supply, who spoke about their business and the wonder of bees.
“I was about 12 when I first became fascinated by bees, and I can truly say they still fascinate me every single day,” said Shook in the video.
Shook also invited anyone interested in beekeeping as a hobby or for commercial reasons to visit their stores near Dallas and Houston for classes and supplies.
“We hope we can work together with you to help save the highways and share a lot of bees with you,” Shook said.
Fagala highlighted the alarming news about the recent bee population collapse.
“This year, North America lost about 62 percent of its bees, a loss that experts are only beginning to understand,” said Fagala.
He added, “A lot of smaller commercial beekeepers are going out of business, and that’s causing food prices to rise.”
Fagala shared that at their store, the price of meatballs and some other food products had already increased due to the bee decline.
“So you are going to see some prices go up with your food because of it,” he warned.
He also pointed out the less obvious ways bees impact our food.
“If we don’t have bees to pollinate the grasses cows eat, then we don’t have milk, cheese, or yogurt,” Fagala explained.
He showed images of what grocery store shelves would look like without bees. The photos showed shelves that were nearly empty, especially in the produce and dairy sections.
Fagala explained the structure of a beehive, starting with the worker bees.
“Worker bees do all the work,” he said. “They are 100 percent female, and they start working immediately after emerging as adults.”
According to Fagala, each worker bee can visit thousands of flowers every day, traveling up to 2.5 miles from the hive and making 15 to 30 trips daily, carrying their own body weight in nectar and pollen back to the hive.
“They only live four to six weeks during the busy spring and summer months because they literally work themselves to death,” said Fagala.
He added that each worker bee produces about a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
“So when you buy a pound of honey, you are actually supporting over 1,100 bees who worked hard to make it,” Fagala said.
The queen bee is the heart of the hive.
“She looks more like a wasp, with a long abdomen,” Fagala explained. “She is fertilized during flight by 10 to 15 drones and can lay up to 1,400 eggs a day.”
The worker bees care for her, feeding and cleaning her so she can focus solely on laying eggs.
“Her pheromones keep the entire hive functioning smoothly. If the queen dies, the whole hive knows within about 15 minutes,” said Fagala.
The drones, or male bees, have a much simpler life.
“Their only purpose is to fertilize the queen during her mating flight. They don’t forage for nectar or pollen, they don’t build the hive, or take care of babies”, Fagala said.
Fagala said that if a drone successfully mates with the queen, he dies immediately after. Those that don’t mate hang around the hive but are usually kicked out before winter.
He jokingly compared drones to “teenage sons playing video games, eating three times as much as the worker bees but not contributing.”
“When food is scarce, the workers kick them out so the hive can survive,” said Fagala.
Finally, Fagala described how honey is harvested.
“Beekeepers remove honey-filled frames, spin them in an extractor to separate the honey, and then filter it before bottling,” he explained.
He said that the local area is one of the top honey-producing regions in the country, with many roadside hives along highways like 146.
The meeting was a powerful reminder of the vital role bees play in our food security and ecosystem. Fagala urged the community to support local beekeepers, plant bee-friendly flowers and help protect these essential pollinators.
“Without bees, our grocery stores, farms, and daily lives would be dramatically different…and not for the better,” he said.