Zero hunger and proper nutrition: the importance of bees

In the early twentieth century, Albert Einstein uttered a phrase that, to most, seemed unnecessarily apocalyptic: "If bees disappeared from the face of the earth, man would be left with only four years to live."  Today, however, this quote from the brilliant German physicist sounds like an ultimatum that can no longer be ignored. Bees are disappearing, and with them at serious risk is also the future of human beings.

This is the starting point for the story of the seventh chapter of BG4SDGs - Time to Change, our project curated by renowned photographer Stefano Guindani to delve into the state of the art of the process of achieving the 17 goals of the UN 2030 Agenda.

On this occasion, Guindani's lens focused on investigating the situation related to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 2 "End hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture." And to do so, the photographer went to Israel, near Tel Aviv, to discover innovative work aimed at preserving bee colonies and enabling them to make their own vital contribution to improving the nutritional capacity of our Planet.

Here in fact Saar Safra invented BeeHome, an innovative project designed to help beekeepers and, more importantly, bee populations.

In fact, Safra has developed a real robotic hive that takes care of the life cycle of bees. Solar-powered, BeeHome is zero-impact and does more than just protect bees from the weather or external agents. Thanks to an advanced computer system, the hive robot gives the beekeeper real-time access to data about the bees that populate it, allowing him to adjust parameters remotely through a dedicated technology platform.

Large-scale deployment of projects like BeeHome could prove instrumental in meeting one of the UN Agenda's most challenging goals-that relating to world hunger-by solving a problem as serious as it is underestimated, which is that of the risk of bee extinction. Today, in fact, as much as 30 percent of the global food chain depends on bees and their pollination.

Moreover, according to some studies, 90 percent of agricultural crops are visited by bees, which are therefore crucial to preserving the biodiversity of our Planet. Yet these are constantly threatened by the hand of man manifested through pesticides and cementing. To understand the magnitude of the problem, one only has to consider that in Europe alone, in the last 30 years, the number of bees has been reduced by 70 percent and their average lifespan has significantly decreased: from five to three years for queen bees and from 30 to 15 days for worker bees.