this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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Is there another pollinator that could take their place?
Not really. Flies do a surprising amount of pollination but they are not interested in the same things that bees are, or as diligent.
frikkin slackers!
Bats are responsible for a lot of pollination too.
Most of our essential crops are wind pollinated (e.g. rice, wheat, corn) or asexual (potatoes). Colony collapse disorder is a real problem of course and colony management/replacement really eats into profitability, but domesticated bees won't become extinct because we so intensively manage them - however other species may be in real trouble. In addition, if we remove the main human causes of colony collapse (neonicotinoids?), they can potentially recover quite quickly, so it's not a problem that takes hundreds or thousands of years to fix, like some others - if we have the will to do it.