The human and the honeybee Dino Martins
I know, insects, it’s really weird,
but bear with me.
Now, I am an entomologist.
I confess to that.
And, when I look at the planet,
the reason I’m an entomologist
is because out of the 1.9 million species
that are described on planet Earth,
over 1 million of them are insects.
And I truly believe as a scientist today
we live in the best of times
because here we are enjoying TED,
and Facebook,
and YouTube,
and this wonderful theater,
healthcare,
longer life spans.
But we also live in the worst of times
because we are on a planet
with 7 billion people
with a lot of problems.
And for those of us
who look at biodiversity,
it’s a heart-wrenching
and wonderful time all together
because we see the links
between nature and people,
and we’re losing them at the same time.
Both honeybees and humans
originate in East Africa.
And, here in Kenya, a wonderful
relationship exists
where a bird called
a honeyguide, up there,
has this interesting phenomenon
where it actually leads either humans,
which it’s done for thousands of years,
77,000 year old paintings from Tanzania,
and the honey badger
to the wild honeybee colony.
Now, for a long time
we thought this relationship
first evolved between the honeyguide
and the honey badger.
But it turns out that it actually evolved
between the human and the honeyguide,
and the badger’s a parasite.
Now, when we look at bees,
there is this amazing diversity out there,
20,000 species.
And one in three bites of food that we eat
is thanks to an insect pollinator.
So one of the things I’m working on
is looking at those links
between nature and sustainable human life.
And here are just
a few of the beautiful bees
that we have in Kenya,
in fact, not far from Nairobi.
Now, how many of you like coffee?
Yeah, I actually can’t drink it
because if I do, my hands shake,
and I can’t pick up ants and bees.
Chocolate?
I love chocolate, the darker the better,
so I really like chocolate.
Now the thing is,
without insect pollinators,
there would be very little coffee
and no chocolate on the planet.
Could you imagine that?
That’s really scary!
Now, I want to show you
out of thousands of examples
that I could have brought here today
to show you how insects
are connected to your life,
to every single human being on the planet.
Here are two colleagues and friends.
Domina is a farmer in Mwanza
in western Tanzania,
and Peter is from the Kerio Valley
in northwestern Kenya.
Now, Domina grows pigeon feed, cow feed,
a whole wide range of legumes.
And she feeds her family,
she survives in a very remote area
based off of these amazing crops,
legumes, a lot of traditional vegetables,
and all of them are pollinated
by these different wild bee species.
Now, Peter grows five varieties
of mango on his farm,
and he actually paid for his education
by growing and selling mangoes.
And I really like mangoes
and so it’s really a great
pleasure working on the farm
with five different varieties of mango.
And if you look at all these
different fruits and crops here,
one thing that connects us to biodiversity
and one thing we do as a scientist,
we write papers.
We do research, and we write papers.
Nobody ever reads them,
but here’s one of my papers.
It’s on the African violet.
This is in the U.S.
This florist sells
about 10,000 dollars worth
of violets a year.
It’s worth about 6
billion dollars in trade.
It originates in East Africa,
and we never knew what pollinated it.
Well, I went off and studied this.
One thing to say about pollinators
is it comes done to being about sex.
And how many of you like sex?
Where are we, the Vatican?
So what happens when insects
help plants have sex
is there’s really good sex.
This is an example of really good sex.
So basically the bee comes along,
it vibrates the flower
at a specific frequency, 11 to 12 hertz,
pollen is released,
and the plant survives in the wild.
This is one of the world’s most endangered
plants.
We go up into the deserts
of northern Kenya,
which are now very famous
because of the discovery of oil.
But I will tell you
a little different story.
These animals, the camel,
which allow life in this
very remote community,
are browsing off of a shrub
called indigofera,
and indigofera is 100%
dependent on bee pollination.
So all these wild bees
produce the indigofera,
which the camels and goats eat.
And we look at a community like this,
Nalaray, northern Samburu,
and people will look at these children
and say they are poor.
And I disagree
because over lunch we collected
30 different bee species
in the Acacia where they had their lunch
and 400 pollinator species
in the Acacia tortilis
where their classroom is located.
So I want to leave you
with a radical piece of technology
called the bee hotel
that you can innovate
and build for yourself.
Create a habitat where
bees can nest and live
in your own backyard.
But more importantly, please create space
in your hearts for insects.
Spend five minutes a day
with them if you can.
And I believe that if the one lesson
we can learn from insects
is that meek shall inherit the Earth.