I probably could have dragged this video on for 45 minutes, but honestly I have to draw a line somewhere, right? Special thanks to the American Museum of Natural History for letting us film in its new Gilder Center and in its collections, where we looked at hundreds of bee specimens from around the world. If you want to see some more stunning photos of native bees, I really recommend you check out Krystle’s Instagram and US Geological Survey’s Flickr account: Krystle: instagram.com/beesip/?hl=en US Geological Survey: www.flickr.com/photos/usgsbiml/ If you find a favorite native bee, let me know below! (I really love the rusty patched bumblebee... What a fluffy stuffed animal.) -Kim
What an ignorant person is running this channel she could have dragged this on for 45 minutes. How about her erroneous information is she aware that fifty percent Bea loss and an almond orchards happens every year because of pesticides. Is she aware overwinter there's a 30% loss of honey bees every year. Millennials are literally useless
Entomologist here - thank you so much for this! I did my thesis on solitary, cavity-nesting bees. Native bees are so cool, but don't get nearly the love they deserve.
Not in my house, I provided them a corner in the garden with a sandy ground, and they come and dig their homes into it. Nice too see them come and go and care about their nest.
What's also to be mentioned: Bees aren't the only insects that are in danger. Wasps, Butterflies, Moths etc. need support as well. All these animals are vital for the ecosystem since they act as a important food source for other animals like birds and reptiles. And you can do a lot to provide help for all kinds of native insects in your neighborhood. Providing food and shelter is very easy and will create an oasis in an otherwise hostile environment from an insects perspective. Most importantly is planting flowers that are useful to insects. That means: No full flowers (the bee has to be able to reach the inside of the flower), ideally native flower species since endangered insects often have a very specific type of flower that is sutable for them as a food source and especially a wide variety of flowers that bloom all year (starting end of winter and ending late fall). Not using pestizides should be obvious. Instead embrace "pests" like aphids - they attract ladybugs. I did this on my balcony and bumblebees and butterflies come here every year.
@@etanlg Tug on anything in the universe, and you will find it connected to everything else. Meaning consequences could ripple through the food web and affect a variety of organisms living within the same habitat. Soooooo, uh no, wasps DO prey on other insects, which means they serve as a means of natural biocontrol to protect crops. Not only that but they are a valid food source for hundreds if not thousands of species. Even bears go running around the forests digging up yellow jacket nests for their larva. Mosquitos and ticks belong in nature just as much as anything else. If mosquitoes were eradicated from the planet, hundreds of species of fish would have to change their diet. Disagree all you want, but the facts are there.
I leave like 70% of my backyard alone and don’t cut down any of the weeds or whatever grows. I’ve seen a significant influx of different kinds of insects and especially native bees.
Just be aware of invasive plants. They can crowd out the native plant species that the pollinators depend on. If your untended region becomes a source of seeds for these invasives, you could actually be doing more harm than good.
How about if you grow a garden with native plants? A lot of weeds are invasive. even dandelions are invasive. There is only one native species of dandelion in the US but it grows in the rocks above the tree line in the mountains.
Also important - to those with lawns/backyards, plant native species! A wide variety of native flowers can be an important food source for native bees, as well as other native insects. Also, leave a few undisturbed patches of leaves/mud for native bees to burrow in. I'm a backyard gardener in Ontario, and this year my anise hyssop, black-eyed susans, and purple coneflower have brought a lot of friends to my garden. Thanks to those pollinators, I have so, so many tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, and more!
Literally why vanilla is so expensive (hand pollination) and why there are almost no vanilla orchids naturally. There are no bees to pollinate them as vanilla beans are really specific in the way they’re pollinated, not all bees can do it.
Great video, and such an important topic. It’s not just bees, insects in general are sadly seeing a huge decline in numbers and diversity. Thankfully, if we make the right changes, the insect populations will likely bounce back almost immediately, since they reproduce so rapidly and are such well adapted organisms.
As someone who works in conservative and habitat restoration I AM SO HAPPY! The word is FINALLY getting out about our native bees! I legit am getting teary eyed great job Vox! A concise video that hits enough of the major points, easy to understand for non experts. Yall are the bees knees 🐝
It is shockingly easy to have a large, positive impact when it comes to insects. I live in the Netherlands and have a tiny, completely tiled 20 m^2 backyard, a 17 m^2 front yard and have flipped a few tiles behind my fence. Over the last 10 years, we have made progressive efforts to make it as welcoming a place for invertebrates as possible. We removed the anti-rooting cloth from underneath our tiles (this allows animals to move below them and for plants to grow where they please), have planted a lot of native plants and placed some bee hotels and places for butterflies and ladybugs to winter. We basically have three biomes. Our front yard is North facing and rather cool and moist, so we basically turned it into a tiny forest with 4 trees and lots of shrubs. Our backyard is warmer and south facing, so we have lots of sun-loving, flowering plants there. The flipped tiles garden is basically mediterranean due to the road there, so we have plants there that can handle the heat. Since we've been working on this, we now have: - all the rolly-pollies, centipedes and millipedes, worms and all types of spiders you could ever want. That includes relatively rare ground spiders and by now rather big hunting spiders. - Bees. Bumbles, some honey but mainly all manner of solitary bees. The bee hotels now house 2 types that are active in different parts of the year and must number around 50 each. - Butterflies and moths. Each year we find (and likely have way more than) at least a half dozen pupae of moths and get visited by about 10 different species of butterflies. The trick: set up ecological niches that can be inhabited and make sure that there are at least 2 species of flowers blooming between April-May and the first frost. That takes a little bit of planning, but is easy enough to do. And then, don't clean up after the plants. Remove dead flowers and prune them properly, of course, but don't clean up dead leaves and other litter more than necessary. That is all stuff that can act as housing and food for critters. Basically: let nature do what it wants to. Oh, and 1-2 places where you can have some water on a dish so insects can drink helps immensely, too.
I love this. My husband and I just moved into a rental house with a huge back yard and I'm looking forward to all the stuff I can do out there for nature. I'm used to having just a small balcony so I have a ton more space now and I definitely intend to use it!
Amazing work! I'm wondering, though, do the insects ever come into your home? How do you handle that? I imagine many people would be interested in this, but to have a spider crawling on your face in the middle of the night is not a pleasant experience.
@@madcube1581 During the summer we don’t close the doors to our backyard, so we have some rolly-pollies walking in and quickly back out every once a while, on a rare case we have a snail waking in and we have about 5-ish spiders setting up shop on our ground floor, but never in a position they cause problems. They only help catching some flies so they are more than welcome. We don’t mind them coming in and if we did, we’d just keep out doors closed. We do have a young cat, so the hunting spiders don’t tend to last long if they do come in XD
Greetings from Australia. When I went to visit a few of my hundreds of relatives in the Netherlands about twenty years ago, the landscape was so artificial, it never occurred to me that this kind of knowledge and practice was happening over there. Love it. Keep it up. And keep sharing it. Many thanks.
It's becoming increasingly popular in my area for people to have natural front lawns, with prairie-style plantings instead of mowed grass. It requires less maintenance, less water, and attracts a lot more diverse insects.
To be clear, the Americas DID/DOES have native, honey producing domesticated bees: The Maya and other mesoamerican civilizations had domesticated meliponine/stingless bees which they used for honey production.
I bought a small bee ‘house’ and put it on a wall. Last year I had two bees nest in the tubes but this year it’s full. I know it’s only a small thing but you don’t need a massive garden to help. Luckily I’m lazy and there are plenty of wild flowers (weeds) for them to feed on
Honestly being lazy is probably the best thing we can do for native insects! Ive never been a super neat gardener but the more "lazy" I get the more fun native things thrive.
Being lazy is very effective for helping out your local ecosystem. Just designating a section of your corner as "for nature" and then stop doing maintenance on it will allow native plants to grow and provide habitat. (You don't completely stop doing maintenance, you just monitor for problems like invasives and then fix them before going back to mostly leaving it alone.) My parents neighbors are farmers and a lot of their land is swampy so they just fenced it off so the cows can't get in that area (cows kept getting stuck, and you can't grow crops in it). So now its just an ignored wetland providing habitat for the frogs and turtles.
Just in case you don’t know, you should clean the holes once all the bees hatch. And replace the blocks/tubes every few years, otherwise it might become infected with a bee disease.
@@nathanho8878 yes it’s designed to come apart for easy cleaning. I was thinking of getting a larger version with a butterfly and beetle section but I’m not sure how to time the cleaning as they need doing at different times. I’ll keep it simple and buy another small easy to use bee only home as that seems to be a success
Where i grew up near the mediterranean used to be teeming with bees, black bees, butterflies, moths, dragonflies, it was so beautiful. Visited two summers ago and in one week i saw one bee. It was dead on the sidewalk. We NEED to do something. I've been donating everything i can to Pollinis, a french org that's doing some extremely good work on a european level. There are other goods orgs out there. We have to stop noxious pesticides. Fast.
I'm in the UK and never seen so many honey bees this year which is a great thing. As a point of interest there was a documentary here a few years ago where they attached tiny cameras to some honey bees and found that pesticides interfered with the bees homing instinct and confused them. Poisoning them in other words. You've really got to wonder what this stuff does to other insects, animals and even us !!!
Sounds brexit had a benefit for u in terms of brits f... their country so badly they dont have any economy left to f... the bees nd other wildlife too sad thing is thats not even a joke :(
If you have ANY kind of outdoor space - a yard, a balcony, even a windowsill - you can help the bees! Grow flowers for them, especially native if you can. This also helps other pollinators too. My father in law keeps 2/3 of the field behind his house untouched, so whatever grows back there is left to grow wild. All kinds of flowering plants and a lot of other stuff too, providing habitat for insects which in turn feed the birds. If you just have a small yard, consider leaving a section of it unmowed, especially if you have clover/dandelions growing out there. They are the first sources of food for hungry bees in the early spring when they're just waking up! I just moved into a rental house and this is my first time having an actual yard, I'm excited as heck to grow all kinds of things out there for the bugs and bees. :)
Finally! A large channel is talking about this, bringing awareness to more and more people. Plant natives, people. Push for the preservation of wilderness. Protect the planet so your kids and/or your friends' kids can have a planet.
It’s worth mentioning that for most of the native bees, their diets are so specialized that they will only eat from one food source which is why it’s so important to plant native wildflowers because they can’t go around to other flowers like the European honeybee. They have to depend on that plant and if it’s gone then so are they
The way to fix this is 100000% to stop monoculture farming, literally every 1/4 mile or so needs to be a different crop, we should also use natural pest control methods like growing particular flowers near crops. Marigolds, basil, Petunias, and many more will deter most pests.
An easiest way is to encourage farmers to let growing the sides of their fields and access way with wild and native flowers, and also by drastically reducing mowing. That has proven to be helpful in the UK.
@@Lauriciusays who? My family has been doing this exact same thing and crop rotation for the last 80 years. Explain me how food becomes more expensive this way.
@@theguythatcoment smaller plots of land means: 1. more access roads, so less actual cultivated land 2. more moving of tractors and other machines for working the soil and the plants, which means time and fuel wasted 3. if manual labour is needed, they will need to walk more across different plots or be taken there with cars, fuel and time again. There could more that I missed, but it boils down to logistical problems/efficiency. Also, culture rotation can be done on a scale of hectares, not a few hundred meters
@@theguythatcoment Different plants need different amount of water, fertilizer, etc. That's a huge problem logistically and the different crops will have differing harvest seasons.
With the decline of insects as a whole globally, i think some of the best advice you can give to someone regardless of where in the world they live is plant some native plants! Even if all you have is a balcony, do some research into the flowers native to your area and plant some in pots. If you have an entire yard there are huge benefits to it being planted with native stuff! Yards like these are significantly easier to maintain (say goodbye to mowing the lawn) because these are plants already adapted to your climate, so once they're established they often require minimal care. You can help provide habitat not just for native bugs, but other animals too like reptiles and birds that feed on those native bugs, or even directly on the plants. I housesit on occasion for a friend who's front and back yards are full of native flowers, bushes and trees. Every morning I look out the window to see it busy with native birds going about the start of their day. It's such a joy to see, and it really does make such a positive impact for these animals. If more people did this it would make such a significant push against the urbanisation that has pushed so many of these animals out of their natural habitats.
Thank you! I’ve been saying this for years! We only focus on honey bees because they provide us with something we consume. Our native pollinators are so important and need our help. They need diversity. We’ve created this lack of diversity by monoculture crops, and demolished our natural biodiversity. We’ve paved the way for destruction. Please start making spaces for native bees. Make your home a safe space for them.
I just moved back to New England (northeast US) after 20 years in Germany. I garden some, and I was constantly asking "Where are the bees?" Not just honeybees, but all insects. Germany was teeming with them, and I can only suppose that strict regulations on pesticide and environment help that.
This helped clear things up a whole lot. I wish that the distinctions between European honey bees and native north American bees were more obvious in those articles.
We in Europe also have a large diversity of solitary bees - so IMHO the correct distinction has been made here. It's not about native vs. non-native species of bees (here we have been lucky that the introduction of the European honey bees didn't do much damage - but they were accompanied with all sorts of non native crops which did and still do a lot of damage to the bio diversity which in turn hurts the diversity among native bee species) - it's about domesticated honey bees and the rest of the 20000 species of bees, all filling their own niche in the eco system...
Vox's in-depth analysis and creative storytelling make their videos both educational and entertaining. That's why Vox is the best RUclips channel out there.
There have also been studies that show that having more native pollinators around improves how honey bees pollinate crops - i.e. having competition makes them move more efficiently.
We have to work together to Ban Grass Lawns in HOAs and make our HOAs promote Gardens, Food Forests, or wildflower Meadows as a alterative to grass Lawns. If you have a Grass Lawn you effectivly make your yard a desert were no life can survive. Grass is not food to our Insects, Birds, Animals, and so on.
Beetles and flies are able to do some pollination in areas where it is too cold for bees. I'm amazed at the work that very tiny bees do. I barely noticed them, but they pollinated the holly flowers, and there are lots of red berries now. My neighbor has a mulberry tree. Somehow, every year there are enough wild bees to ensure that that tree will be loaded with mulberries. We don't notice a lot of these bees, but they're there.
Support your native habitat if you have any green space. Some of the most common garden flowers in the US aren't native. Some aren't even recognizeable to native pollinators. So find native flowers and grasses and use those in your landscaping.
I have a few acres of land, I started to let half of it just grow and do it’s own thing..and only partially because I’m too lazy to mow the whole thing lol. It’s amazing to see the variety of wildlife that shows up since I started only mowing half of my property. There are so many wildflowers that have popped up, which brings different pollinators. My favorite are the shiny green ground-burrowing bees that act like prairie dogs and are almost tame and won’t (can’t) sting you. Let some of your land go wild if you can.
Can I just saaaaaay!!!! Im sooooo stoked that finally Im watching a video about this issue!!! I love love California Bumble bees!!! Since volunteering with Audubon Society I learned more about them! And grew more appreciation of them! I learned and see some of the ground dwelling bees as well. Thats also I plant lots of native plants in the garden now!!! They are so precious! Everyone can help out too! Plant some native plants in pots!!!
The (small) amount of sugar and water trick works when they have no energy. I had one on my patio that looked sure not to make it and exhausted. Was cool to see him recover and fly off
Beekeeper and entomologist here. Thank you so much for stressing the importance of native species and honey bees in agriculture! Native bees and other pollinators are really underappreciated and need help. In fact, it's even possible to domesticate more pollinators for agriculture, but there has been a lack of research to pursue this. For now, people need to plant more native flowers and preserve habitats. Biodiversity is key to preventing a food and ecosystem crisis.
I worked at the USGS Bee Inventory Lab and it's amazing to see the work around the bees!! I took some of the high depth pictures when had an internship there. Save the bees!
Seems like two possible mitigations to this would be: 1. Encouraging farmers through direct subsidies to leave a certain percentage of their fields grow wild, rotating each year. 2. Providing tax incentives to homeowners to grow native plants in their yards instead of grass. (May not be possible in many communities due to HOA regulations)
Number 2 can easily (Well, "easily") be fixed by simply creating laws limiting the authority of HOA regulations. Actual laws always pre-empt whatever authority HOAs have thankfully, and they can easily choose to say that HOA regulations on lawns are all legally unenforceable and if an HOA tries to enforce them anyway they have to pay the legal bills of anyone affected that takes them to court as well as pay statutory damages.
As an exceptionally lazy person, I can say I have been pleased to participate in "No Mow May" over the last couple years. It is truly amazing to see all the flowers that grow in my grass lawn through the month of May.
I have those green iridescent Orchid bees all over my garden, My cucumbers and cantaloupe are full of flowers and full of pollinators. every year i try to add more pollinator friendly area to my garden. it's a challenge when nearly all yards here are lifeless grass or rock yards
This goes hand in hand with a major issue in the U.S., the loss of the most endangered ecosystem in the world...no, it's not rainforest like the media has been promoting--though that is of concern of course as well--it's our very own prairie...less than 1/10th of 1% is left...and developers and "green energy" continue to eat up what remnants are left. It's actually ranchers that are doing some of the best work saving it. Just like the our native bees that help pollination, many of which relied on our prairies, our own native upland grouse, the pinnated grouse or "prairie chicken", the umbrella species of the prairie is not only in decline but some of the subspecies are very close to disappearing along with a plethora of other grassland reliant species. This infotainment is a start. We need more discussion of conservation focus and how much the prairie means to America and our past and future. Trees are not always the answer and most certainly are not meant to be planted everywhere, sometimes it's open prairie on the horizon that's needed. So often we harbor a culture of conservation focused around planting trees and making parks, when in fact we are losing one of the most precious ecosystems out there...the same one that made our most fertile soil for farming, that provided settlers and native tribes with ample game and clean water. Many of our most beloved flowers come from this ecosystem as well. There's so much potential in it that hasn't been explored or that we've lost already. Thanks for this video!
Thanks for highlighting this issue. I was a biology major in college and I spent 3 years doing undergrad research on native bee conservation. I have this talk with people a lot and try to encourage people to plant native plants instead of lawns since people find that pretty appealing.
I have a tiny yard in an hoa. I can only dedicate maybe a hundred square feet of my backyard to the wild. A stripper on my fence and a couple of islands I can walk around. I have actively flowering plants from the fields around my house prior to their development. I have managed to import into my sterile developer home backyard what was in these fields before the houses were built. I have for many years now enjoyed the dozen or so pollinators they come to my yard. I can observe their numbers week-to-week and see fluctuations in their local food supply. At the end of summer I had a massive influx of bees immediately following the butchering of the last and most wild of fields near my home. I have slowly introduced even smaller patches of wild in my front yard, islands surrounded by grass. I manage them and keep them as attractive as I can in the front yard.
This video inspired me to keep my yards free of pesticides and leaving my backyard wilds ( what ever the winds bring). There is a myriad of bees I have yet to identify and never was I stung. My little heaven is filled with life.😊
I just recently bought some soap made from honey over in San Francisco last month. A portion of the procceds go to saving the honey bee. I also bought a necklace with a bee on it as a Mother's Day gift for my mom & it came with a certificate & her own adopted Queen Bee
I have noticed that all the doom and gloom is slightly overblown. It takes just one season for native bees and bumblebees to inhabat an area you plant for them with the right species. the crevasses some bees life out their lives is interesting
I was once considering keeping honeybees but eventually decided to just grow lots of flowers for Australian native bees, since they are so critical for the Australian landscape and are at significant risk.
Thank you for this video! I love seeing bumble bees in my yard in the summer. I always do what I can every year to plant flowers for them, cuz I know they’re hungry.
So glad to see this video, it hits all the major points I've been trying to tell people. I'll be sharing this now. @6:18 The rusty patch bumblebee is one of my favorites, interestingly, they're doing ok in small cities. The video covered how industrial farming with pesticides and habitat loss is threatening them, and here in Wisconsin, the rusty patches have found sanctuary in cities where people have lots of flower gardens. Planting native species is especially helpful. Lobby your local government to implement incentives for native lawns and require permits for large area pesticide applications.
Its so sad to see other bees only being barely recognised and just knowing that some species of bees might go extinct especially when the bees is one of my favourite animals
We have a set of bee hotels on our flats balcony - and every year I need to buy new ones because the old ones get overrun by the previous years generation (and we strive to have butterfly and bee friendly flowers going all year long from early spring time to late autumn). Those solitary bees wouldn't sting you ever unless you threatened them to an inch of their lives, so I sit next to the bee hotels and watch them busily filling the holes of the reed stems that hotel is comprised of. A little later in the year you can find other solitary bees in the evening or morning when they have bitten into a flower or grass stem to rest for the night.
This year instead of mowing the lawn, we’ve mown a path through it. We’ve left the flower beds to over grow and haven’t pruned trees or hedges yet. It’s been magical, more birds, fledglings, butterflies, all kinds of bees and flying insects. Not a single problem in the house, the garden has felt lush and cool in hot weather. It looks messy, but we’ve got used to it. We’ll tidy and prune it back at the end of the year, making sure to add areas for bees and insects to hide and sleep.
Unfortunately, people don't do their research on the most endangered species of bees in the world, thats why.. They just buy honey bee combs, give themselves a pat on the back, and think they were saving the bees one by one (which to an extent they are helping) And don't get me wrong, our hearts are in the right place, but there are hundreds of more different species of bees on the brink of extinction as well! Educate yourself... learning about their ecosystem and conservation of those bees are fascinating. We can bring their numbers up and share this beautiful world with all of them!
There are many more pollinators than bees and they all suffer from habitat loss and pesticide misuse. We created a huge agricultural ecosystem which is human-centric, so we favor the species which are "useful", in other words important for our direct survival, forgetting the big picture.
My research focuses on native bee biodiversity, and I was expecting this video to get it wrong because the misinformation is so prevalent, but you did a great job!
Bees and other pollinating insects are stressed out. Why? Because of petrol-based chemical compounds that are being broadcast not only in ag, but in other areas of manufacturing also. All petrol-based chemical compounds are carcinogenic, and these pollinating insects are desperately attempting to survive!! Just as when humans get stressed, they are much more susceptible to disease and parasites. This has a great deal to do with why bee colonies are dying out!!💜🏋️♥️
that chicken-honeybee analogy is so good. some million bird/thousand bee species and people are hyper focusing on the one that needs absolutely no help.
Its also not just bees either. All sorts of insects (even wasps (naming them because they get so much hate ususally)) are pollinating a variety of different plants. Its really shouldnt bee "save the (honey) bees", but save the insects. Very depressing fact: over the last 30 years we lost 80% of all biomass of insects in the world
I’ve been paying more attention to the bumblebee and have been learning about them on my own and don’t see much about them online they do have ground hives and over winter really well
I am glad that my favorite bee, the Eastern Carpenter Bee _(Xylocopa virginica)_ isn't in any danger of extinction. The males of this species are one of my favorite harbingers of spring -- when I see them patrolling their territories (and hurling themselves headlong at anything flying through that airspace), I know warmer days are soon to come.
I live in Southern Arizona. When I moved here over a decade ago, I had hundreds of bees that came to pollinate my aloe vera plants. Over the years less and less bees would visit. (i always put water out for them). This year, I had no bee visitors. Truly sad.
As an heirloom farm who uses no chemicals in farming, it's easy to see all the different beneficial bees and parasitic wasps in the garden, they love it!
There are a lot of honeybees where I live. The carpenter bee population has seen a massive decline in my area after I removed their nests from my house and mailbox three times.
Something you could have mentioned: livestock requires 70% of all global agricultural land (including land used to grow all the crops to feed the animals). We can lessen the farm area for animal feed by eating more plants thereby returning more existing agricultural land back to nature for native bee preservation
Two of the best ways to reduce the amount of land that you use is to 1) become vegan, as animal agriculture is an irder of magnitude less efficient than eating crops directly due to energy loss across each triphic levels. This means that significantly more farmland is needed to grow crops for animals than if we ate the crops directly. 2) Live in an apartment. Denser cities means less urban sprawl and thus less land use (as well as a host of other environmental benefits).
I probably could have dragged this video on for 45 minutes, but honestly I have to draw a line somewhere, right? Special thanks to the American Museum of Natural History for letting us film in its new Gilder Center and in its collections, where we looked at hundreds of bee specimens from around the world. If you want to see some more stunning photos of native bees, I really recommend you check out Krystle’s Instagram and US Geological Survey’s Flickr account:
Krystle: instagram.com/beesip/?hl=en
US Geological Survey: www.flickr.com/photos/usgsbiml/
If you find a favorite native bee, let me know below! (I really love the rusty patched bumblebee... What a fluffy stuffed animal.)
-Kim
Leafcutter bees are so fun to watch!
I wish this video was longer!! Fascinating, informative, and eye-opening. Now I need to learn more. Many thanks and much love 💕😊
Why only women scientists? Where are men? Where's equality?
shouldve been an hour long. ive watched so many vox videos and i swear this was the most informative, well paced, one by far. amazing
What an ignorant person is running this channel she could have dragged this on for 45 minutes.
How about her erroneous information is she aware that fifty percent Bea loss and an almond orchards happens every year because of pesticides. Is she aware overwinter there's a 30% loss of honey bees every year.
Millennials are literally useless
Entomologist here - thank you so much for this! I did my thesis on solitary, cavity-nesting bees. Native bees are so cool, but don't get nearly the love they deserve.
Not in my house, I provided them a corner in the garden with a sandy ground, and they come and dig their homes into it. Nice too see them come and go and care about their nest.
Could you please share your thesis? I'm working on urban pollination and in my theses at the moment!
What's also to be mentioned: Bees aren't the only insects that are in danger. Wasps, Butterflies, Moths etc. need support as well. All these animals are vital for the ecosystem since they act as a important food source for other animals like birds and reptiles. And you can do a lot to provide help for all kinds of native insects in your neighborhood. Providing food and shelter is very easy and will create an oasis in an otherwise hostile environment from an insects perspective. Most importantly is planting flowers that are useful to insects. That means: No full flowers (the bee has to be able to reach the inside of the flower), ideally native flower species since endangered insects often have a very specific type of flower that is sutable for them as a food source and especially a wide variety of flowers that bloom all year (starting end of winter and ending late fall). Not using pestizides should be obvious. Instead embrace "pests" like aphids - they attract ladybugs.
I did this on my balcony and bumblebees and butterflies come here every year.
I disagree as wasps are doing more harm than good and they should all be completely eradicated just like misquitos and just like ticks
@@etanlg nuh uh
What are examples of full flowers
@@etanlg Tug on anything in the universe, and you will find it connected to everything else. Meaning consequences could ripple through the food web and affect a variety of organisms living within the same habitat. Soooooo, uh no, wasps DO prey on other insects, which means they serve as a means of natural biocontrol to protect crops. Not only that but they are a valid food source for hundreds if not thousands of species. Even bears go running around the forests digging up yellow jacket nests for their larva. Mosquitos and ticks belong in nature just as much as anything else. If mosquitoes were eradicated from the planet, hundreds of species of fish would have to change their diet.
Disagree all you want, but the facts are there.
Fukc the moths. The damage they’ve done to my wool suits and tops is catastrophic
I leave like 70% of my backyard alone and don’t cut down any of the weeds or whatever grows. I’ve seen a significant influx of different kinds of insects and especially native bees.
Just be aware of invasive plants. They can crowd out the native plant species that the pollinators depend on. If your untended region becomes a source of seeds for these invasives, you could actually be doing more harm than good.
I cultivate only the two acres closest to the house. San Diego County has more biodiversity than 49 states. Avoiding pesticides and herbicides
Have fun with those spiders.
Especially with high grass, and im talking about Giant spiders
How about if you grow a garden with native plants? A lot of weeds are invasive. even dandelions are invasive. There is only one native species of dandelion in the US but it grows in the rocks above the tree line in the mountains.
I pick up roadkill to put in my yard to keep out the invasive non-native weeds.
Also important - to those with lawns/backyards, plant native species! A wide variety of native flowers can be an important food source for native bees, as well as other native insects. Also, leave a few undisturbed patches of leaves/mud for native bees to burrow in.
I'm a backyard gardener in Ontario, and this year my anise hyssop, black-eyed susans, and purple coneflower have brought a lot of friends to my garden. Thanks to those pollinators, I have so, so many tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, and more!
Literally why vanilla is so expensive (hand pollination) and why there are almost no vanilla orchids naturally. There are no bees to pollinate them as vanilla beans are really specific in the way they’re pollinated, not all bees can do it.
Great video, and such an important topic. It’s not just bees, insects in general are sadly seeing a huge decline in numbers and diversity. Thankfully, if we make the right changes, the insect populations will likely bounce back almost immediately, since they reproduce so rapidly and are such well adapted organisms.
Insects ruined my life. They took my job and are dating my ex wife.
People tell me to move on, but I just want to see my kids again.
@@hamcheeselettucemayosandwich.
🍺😂👍
The “if” is totally the problem.
Vox inspires me.. My parents said if i get 40K followers They'd buy me a professional camera for recording..begging u guys , literally
Begging...
@@namantherockstarTry making good content instead of begging for subscribers on random videos.
As someone who works in conservative and habitat restoration I AM SO HAPPY! The word is FINALLY getting out about our native bees! I legit am getting teary eyed great job Vox! A concise video that hits enough of the major points, easy to understand for non experts. Yall are the bees knees 🐝
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@@Littleweenamanknees
It is shockingly easy to have a large, positive impact when it comes to insects.
I live in the Netherlands and have a tiny, completely tiled 20 m^2 backyard, a 17 m^2 front yard and have flipped a few tiles behind my fence. Over the last 10 years, we have made progressive efforts to make it as welcoming a place for invertebrates as possible. We removed the anti-rooting cloth from underneath our tiles (this allows animals to move below them and for plants to grow where they please), have planted a lot of native plants and placed some bee hotels and places for butterflies and ladybugs to winter. We basically have three biomes. Our front yard is North facing and rather cool and moist, so we basically turned it into a tiny forest with 4 trees and lots of shrubs. Our backyard is warmer and south facing, so we have lots of sun-loving, flowering plants there. The flipped tiles garden is basically mediterranean due to the road there, so we have plants there that can handle the heat.
Since we've been working on this, we now have:
- all the rolly-pollies, centipedes and millipedes, worms and all types of spiders you could ever want. That includes relatively rare ground spiders and by now rather big hunting spiders.
- Bees. Bumbles, some honey but mainly all manner of solitary bees. The bee hotels now house 2 types that are active in different parts of the year and must number around 50 each.
- Butterflies and moths. Each year we find (and likely have way more than) at least a half dozen pupae of moths and get visited by about 10 different species of butterflies.
The trick: set up ecological niches that can be inhabited and make sure that there are at least 2 species of flowers blooming between April-May and the first frost. That takes a little bit of planning, but is easy enough to do. And then, don't clean up after the plants. Remove dead flowers and prune them properly, of course, but don't clean up dead leaves and other litter more than necessary. That is all stuff that can act as housing and food for critters. Basically: let nature do what it wants to.
Oh, and 1-2 places where you can have some water on a dish so insects can drink helps immensely, too.
I love this. My husband and I just moved into a rental house with a huge back yard and I'm looking forward to all the stuff I can do out there for nature. I'm used to having just a small balcony so I have a ton more space now and I definitely intend to use it!
Amazing work! I'm wondering, though, do the insects ever come into your home? How do you handle that?
I imagine many people would be interested in this, but to have a spider crawling on your face in the middle of the night is not a pleasant experience.
@@madcube1581 During the summer we don’t close the doors to our backyard, so we have some rolly-pollies walking in and quickly back out every once a while, on a rare case we have a snail waking in and we have about 5-ish spiders setting up shop on our ground floor, but never in a position they cause problems. They only help catching some flies so they are more than welcome.
We don’t mind them coming in and if we did, we’d just keep out doors closed. We do have a young cat, so the hunting spiders don’t tend to last long if they do come in XD
Greetings from Australia. When I went to visit a few of my hundreds of relatives in the Netherlands about twenty years ago, the landscape was so artificial, it never occurred to me that this kind of knowledge and practice was happening over there. Love it. Keep it up. And keep sharing it. Many thanks.
It's becoming increasingly popular in my area for people to have natural front lawns, with prairie-style plantings instead of mowed grass. It requires less maintenance, less water, and attracts a lot more diverse insects.
To be clear, the Americas DID/DOES have native, honey producing domesticated bees: The Maya and other mesoamerican civilizations had domesticated meliponine/stingless bees which they used for honey production.
Maya peoples still have this relationship with those bees! not just a past tense thing :)
@@тито-к9в I'm very aware that Maya people are still around, but I didn't know that that form of honey production was still done
@@MajoraZ it is!
Hmm
I bought a small bee ‘house’ and put it on a wall. Last year I had two bees nest in the tubes but this year it’s full. I know it’s only a small thing but you don’t need a massive garden to help. Luckily I’m lazy and there are plenty of wild flowers (weeds) for them to feed on
Honestly being lazy is probably the best thing we can do for native insects! Ive never been a super neat gardener but the more "lazy" I get the more fun native things thrive.
Vox inspires me.. My parents said if i get 40K followers They'd buy me a professional camera for recording..begging u guys , literally
Begging...
Being lazy is very effective for helping out your local ecosystem. Just designating a section of your corner as "for nature" and then stop doing maintenance on it will allow native plants to grow and provide habitat. (You don't completely stop doing maintenance, you just monitor for problems like invasives and then fix them before going back to mostly leaving it alone.)
My parents neighbors are farmers and a lot of their land is swampy so they just fenced it off so the cows can't get in that area (cows kept getting stuck, and you can't grow crops in it). So now its just an ignored wetland providing habitat for the frogs and turtles.
Just in case you don’t know, you should clean the holes once all the bees hatch. And replace the blocks/tubes every few years, otherwise it might become infected with a bee disease.
@@nathanho8878 yes it’s designed to come apart for easy cleaning. I was thinking of getting a larger version with a butterfly and beetle section but I’m not sure how to time the cleaning as they need doing at different times. I’ll keep it simple and buy another small easy to use bee only home as that seems to be a success
Where i grew up near the mediterranean used to be teeming with bees, black bees, butterflies, moths, dragonflies, it was so beautiful. Visited two summers ago and in one week i saw one bee. It was dead on the sidewalk. We NEED to do something. I've been donating everything i can to Pollinis, a french org that's doing some extremely good work on a european level. There are other goods orgs out there. We have to stop noxious pesticides. Fast.
we have to hold the corporations responsible for this accountable and shut them down.
I'm in the UK and never seen so many honey bees this year which is a great thing.
As a point of interest there was a documentary here a few years ago where they attached tiny cameras to some honey bees and found that pesticides interfered with the bees homing instinct and confused them. Poisoning them in other words. You've really got to wonder what this stuff does to other insects, animals and even us !!!
I'm surprised how well we're going about it in the UK. Both home owners and councils making proactive steps.
Sounds brexit had a benefit for u
in terms of brits f... their country so badly they dont have any economy left to f... the bees nd other wildlife too
sad thing is thats not even a joke :(
Vox inspires me.. My parents said if i get 40K followers They'd buy me a professional camera for recording..begging u guys , literally
Begging...
Funny how I was thinking about the same video with “confused” bees. It’s alarming.
@@namantherockstarI'm gonna start reporting you wherever I find you. Stop embarrassing yourself.
If you have ANY kind of outdoor space - a yard, a balcony, even a windowsill - you can help the bees! Grow flowers for them, especially native if you can. This also helps other pollinators too.
My father in law keeps 2/3 of the field behind his house untouched, so whatever grows back there is left to grow wild. All kinds of flowering plants and a lot of other stuff too, providing habitat for insects which in turn feed the birds. If you just have a small yard, consider leaving a section of it unmowed, especially if you have clover/dandelions growing out there. They are the first sources of food for hungry bees in the early spring when they're just waking up!
I just moved into a rental house and this is my first time having an actual yard, I'm excited as heck to grow all kinds of things out there for the bugs and bees. :)
Finally! A large channel is talking about this, bringing awareness to more and more people.
Plant natives, people. Push for the preservation of wilderness. Protect the planet so your kids and/or your friends' kids can have a planet.
It’s worth mentioning that for most of the native bees, their diets are so specialized that they will only eat from one food source which is why it’s so important to plant native wildflowers because they can’t go around to other flowers like the European honeybee. They have to depend on that plant and if it’s gone then so are they
The way to fix this is 100000% to stop monoculture farming, literally every 1/4 mile or so needs to be a different crop, we should also use natural pest control methods like growing particular flowers near crops. Marigolds, basil, Petunias, and many more will deter most pests.
You can't have enough food and at an affordable cost by having different cultures every 400m
An easiest way is to encourage farmers to let growing the sides of their fields and access way with wild and native flowers, and also by drastically reducing mowing. That has proven to be helpful in the UK.
@@Lauriciusays who? My family has been doing this exact same thing and crop rotation for the last 80 years. Explain me how food becomes more expensive this way.
@@theguythatcoment smaller plots of land means:
1. more access roads, so less actual cultivated land
2. more moving of tractors and other machines for working the soil and the plants, which means time and fuel wasted
3. if manual labour is needed, they will need to walk more across different plots or be taken there with cars, fuel and time again.
There could more that I missed, but it boils down to logistical problems/efficiency.
Also, culture rotation can be done on a scale of hectares, not a few hundred meters
@@theguythatcoment Different plants need different amount of water, fertilizer, etc. That's a huge problem logistically and the different crops will have differing harvest seasons.
With the decline of insects as a whole globally, i think some of the best advice you can give to someone regardless of where in the world they live is plant some native plants! Even if all you have is a balcony, do some research into the flowers native to your area and plant some in pots. If you have an entire yard there are huge benefits to it being planted with native stuff! Yards like these are significantly easier to maintain (say goodbye to mowing the lawn) because these are plants already adapted to your climate, so once they're established they often require minimal care. You can help provide habitat not just for native bugs, but other animals too like reptiles and birds that feed on those native bugs, or even directly on the plants.
I housesit on occasion for a friend who's front and back yards are full of native flowers, bushes and trees. Every morning I look out the window to see it busy with native birds going about the start of their day. It's such a joy to see, and it really does make such a positive impact for these animals. If more people did this it would make such a significant push against the urbanisation that has pushed so many of these animals out of their natural habitats.
Thank you! I’ve been saying this for years! We only focus on honey bees because they provide us with something we consume. Our native pollinators are so important and need our help. They need diversity. We’ve created this lack of diversity by monoculture crops, and demolished our natural biodiversity. We’ve paved the way for destruction. Please start making spaces for native bees. Make your home a safe space for them.
I just moved back to New England (northeast US) after 20 years in Germany. I garden some, and I was constantly asking "Where are the bees?" Not just honeybees, but all insects. Germany was teeming with them, and I can only suppose that strict regulations on pesticide and environment help that.
This helped clear things up a whole lot. I wish that the distinctions between European honey bees and native north American bees were more obvious in those articles.
We in Europe also have a large diversity of solitary bees - so IMHO the correct distinction has been made here. It's not about native vs. non-native species of bees (here we have been lucky that the introduction of the European honey bees didn't do much damage - but they were accompanied with all sorts of non native crops which did and still do a lot of damage to the bio diversity which in turn hurts the diversity among native bee species) - it's about domesticated honey bees and the rest of the 20000 species of bees, all filling their own niche in the eco system...
I remember seeing strange holes in my garden and being surprised when I saw BEES crawling in and out of them. That’s how I learned about native bees.
Yeah, I used to play with the bees in the sandboxes in grade school lol
Vox's in-depth analysis and creative storytelling make their videos both educational and entertaining. That's why Vox is the best RUclips channel out there.
The bees need to be protected. They’re essential workers that help in providing sustenance to other living organisms within the ecosystem.
All Insect Lives Matter not just BLM. (Bee lives matter)
bees
There have also been studies that show that having more native pollinators around improves how honey bees pollinate crops - i.e. having competition makes them move more efficiently.
We have to work together to Ban Grass Lawns in HOAs and make our HOAs promote Gardens, Food Forests, or wildflower Meadows as a alterative to grass Lawns. If you have a Grass Lawn you effectivly make your yard a desert were no life can survive. Grass is not food to our Insects, Birds, Animals, and so on.
Beetles and flies are able to do some pollination in areas where it is too cold for bees. I'm amazed at the work that very tiny bees do. I barely noticed them, but they pollinated the holly flowers, and there are lots of red berries now. My neighbor has a mulberry tree. Somehow, every year there are enough wild bees to ensure that that tree will be loaded with mulberries. We don't notice a lot of these bees, but they're there.
Support your native habitat if you have any green space. Some of the most common garden flowers in the US aren't native. Some aren't even recognizeable to native pollinators. So find native flowers and grasses and use those in your landscaping.
THANK YOU.
The solitary bees need their voices bee heard
I have a few acres of land, I started to let half of it just grow and do it’s own thing..and only partially because I’m too lazy to mow the whole thing lol. It’s amazing to see the variety of wildlife that shows up since I started only mowing half of my property. There are so many wildflowers that have popped up, which brings different pollinators. My favorite are the shiny green ground-burrowing bees that act like prairie dogs and are almost tame and won’t (can’t) sting you. Let some of your land go wild if you can.
Can I just saaaaaay!!!! Im sooooo stoked that finally Im watching a video about this issue!!! I love love California Bumble bees!!! Since volunteering with Audubon Society I learned more about them! And grew more appreciation of them! I learned and see some of the ground dwelling bees as well. Thats also I plant lots of native plants in the garden now!!! They are so precious! Everyone can help out too! Plant some native plants in pots!!!
The (small) amount of sugar and water trick works when they have no energy. I had one on my patio that looked sure not to make it and exhausted. Was cool to see him recover and fly off
Beekeeper and entomologist here. Thank you so much for stressing the importance of native species and honey bees in agriculture! Native bees and other pollinators are really underappreciated and need help. In fact, it's even possible to domesticate more pollinators for agriculture, but there has been a lack of research to pursue this. For now, people need to plant more native flowers and preserve habitats. Biodiversity is key to preventing a food and ecosystem crisis.
I worked at the USGS Bee Inventory Lab and it's amazing to see the work around the bees!! I took some of the high depth pictures when had an internship there. Save the bees!
Seems like two possible mitigations to this would be:
1. Encouraging farmers through direct subsidies to leave a certain percentage of their fields grow wild, rotating each year.
2. Providing tax incentives to homeowners to grow native plants in their yards instead of grass. (May not be possible in many communities due to HOA regulations)
Number 2 can easily (Well, "easily") be fixed by simply creating laws limiting the authority of HOA regulations. Actual laws always pre-empt whatever authority HOAs have thankfully, and they can easily choose to say that HOA regulations on lawns are all legally unenforceable and if an HOA tries to enforce them anyway they have to pay the legal bills of anyone affected that takes them to court as well as pay statutory damages.
As an exceptionally lazy person, I can say I have been pleased to participate in "No Mow May" over the last couple years. It is truly amazing to see all the flowers that grow in my grass lawn through the month of May.
@@mariecleary Don't tempt me.
I have firewood placed outside my home, which attract carpenter bees. I haven’t used or moved the wood afterwards.
THANK YOU!!! Save the bees means all bees, not just the bees that produce commercial goods for us!
I have those green iridescent Orchid bees all over my garden, My cucumbers and cantaloupe are full of flowers and full of pollinators. every year i try to add more pollinator friendly area to my garden. it's a challenge when nearly all yards here are lifeless grass or rock yards
Im part of the CWA of NSW in Australia, and this past year our fauna focus has been on native bee species here in Australia.
I keep honeybees, but when I see a bumble bee or another native bee around, I am so enchanted! They are lovely.
This reporter is awesome!
YES! Finally, more people are talking about this
This goes hand in hand with a major issue in the U.S., the loss of the most endangered ecosystem in the world...no, it's not rainforest like the media has been promoting--though that is of concern of course as well--it's our very own prairie...less than 1/10th of 1% is left...and developers and "green energy" continue to eat up what remnants are left. It's actually ranchers that are doing some of the best work saving it. Just like the our native bees that help pollination, many of which relied on our prairies, our own native upland grouse, the pinnated grouse or "prairie chicken", the umbrella species of the prairie is not only in decline but some of the subspecies are very close to disappearing along with a plethora of other grassland reliant species. This infotainment is a start. We need more discussion of conservation focus and how much the prairie means to America and our past and future. Trees are not always the answer and most certainly are not meant to be planted everywhere, sometimes it's open prairie on the horizon that's needed. So often we harbor a culture of conservation focused around planting trees and making parks, when in fact we are losing one of the most precious ecosystems out there...the same one that made our most fertile soil for farming, that provided settlers and native tribes with ample game and clean water. Many of our most beloved flowers come from this ecosystem as well. There's so much potential in it that hasn't been explored or that we've lost already. Thanks for this video!
Thanks for highlighting this issue. I was a biology major in college and I spent 3 years doing undergrad research on native bee conservation. I have this talk with people a lot and try to encourage people to plant native plants instead of lawns since people find that pretty appealing.
I have a tiny yard in an hoa. I can only dedicate maybe a hundred square feet of my backyard to the wild. A stripper on my fence and a couple of islands I can walk around. I have actively flowering plants from the fields around my house prior to their development. I have managed to import into my sterile developer home backyard what was in these fields before the houses were built. I have for many years now enjoyed the dozen or so pollinators they come to my yard. I can observe their numbers week-to-week and see fluctuations in their local food supply. At the end of summer I had a massive influx of bees immediately following the butchering of the last and most wild of fields near my home. I have slowly introduced even smaller patches of wild in my front yard, islands surrounded by grass. I manage them and keep them as attractive as I can in the front yard.
This video inspired me to keep my yards free of pesticides and leaving my backyard wilds ( what ever the winds bring). There is a myriad of bees I have yet to identify and never was I stung. My little heaven is filled with life.😊
I just recently bought some soap made from honey over in San Francisco last month. A portion of the procceds go to saving the honey bee. I also bought a necklace with a bee on it as a Mother's Day gift for my mom & it came with a certificate & her own adopted Queen Bee
We're in big trouble if bees have to come all the way from Australia to America just to pollinate the Almond trees.
I'm surprised the Australians found enough bees to export, last year they literally wiped out half the hives because they suspected mites.
@@maralfniqle5092sometimes drastic measures like that are necessary. If mites in beehives spread, chances are none of the bees survive
Wait....pollinating broccoli? Isn't the part we harvest and eat just the undeveloped flowers? Thus no flowers needing pollination to set fruit/seed.
I have noticed that all the doom and gloom is slightly overblown. It takes just one season for native bees and bumblebees to inhabat an area you plant for them with the right species. the crevasses some bees life out their lives is interesting
im saving up to buy a bee hive for my small residential backyard but for native australian stingless bees so yay, bought hundreds of seeds
I was once considering keeping honeybees but eventually decided to just grow lots of flowers for Australian native bees, since they are so critical for the Australian landscape and are at significant risk.
Insecticides,pesticides, herbicides etc etc. That is what's happening to the world's fauna, flora and insects
Thank you for this video! I love seeing bumble bees in my yard in the summer. I always do what I can every year to plant flowers for them, cuz I know they’re hungry.
Wonderful journalism at work here. The people must know!
THANK YOU! Finally a channel with real outreach talking about this!
So glad to see this video, it hits all the major points I've been trying to tell people. I'll be sharing this now. @6:18 The rusty patch bumblebee is one of my favorites, interestingly, they're doing ok in small cities. The video covered how industrial farming with pesticides and habitat loss is threatening them, and here in Wisconsin, the rusty patches have found sanctuary in cities where people have lots of flower gardens. Planting native species is especially helpful. Lobby your local government to implement incentives for native lawns and require permits for large area pesticide applications.
Fire suppression is whats killing everything
Its so sad to see other bees only being barely recognised and just knowing that some species of bees might go extinct especially when the bees is one of my favourite animals
In Pittsburgh at least, I’ve seen more things that say Save the Pollinators than Bees
Why are people always trying to fix everything 🤦🏻♂️
We have a set of bee hotels on our flats balcony - and every year I need to buy new ones because the old ones get overrun by the previous years generation (and we strive to have butterfly and bee friendly flowers going all year long from early spring time to late autumn). Those solitary bees wouldn't sting you ever unless you threatened them to an inch of their lives, so I sit next to the bee hotels and watch them busily filling the holes of the reed stems that hotel is comprised of. A little later in the year you can find other solitary bees in the evening or morning when they have bitten into a flower or grass stem to rest for the night.
Thank you for helping us focusing on saving native bees!
I wish this video was longer!! Fascinating, informative, and eye-opening. Now I need to learn more. Many thanks and much love 💕😊
."To leave things bee" very nice. I liked that.
This year instead of mowing the lawn, we’ve mown a path through it. We’ve left the flower beds to over grow and haven’t pruned trees or hedges yet. It’s been magical, more birds, fledglings, butterflies, all kinds of bees and flying insects. Not a single problem in the house, the garden has felt lush and cool in hot weather. It looks messy, but we’ve got used to it. We’ll tidy and prune it back at the end of the year, making sure to add areas for bees and insects to hide and sleep.
Unfortunately, people don't do their research on the most endangered species of bees in the world, thats why.. They just buy honey bee combs, give themselves a pat on the back, and think they were saving the bees one by one (which to an extent they are helping) And don't get me wrong, our hearts are in the right place, but there are hundreds of more different species of bees on the brink of extinction as well! Educate yourself... learning about their ecosystem and conservation of those bees are fascinating. We can bring their numbers up and share this beautiful world with all of them!
If bees become extinct, SO DO WE ❗
🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
There are many more pollinators than bees and they all suffer from habitat loss and pesticide misuse. We created a huge agricultural ecosystem which is human-centric, so we favor the species which are "useful", in other words important for our direct survival, forgetting the big picture.
My research focuses on native bee biodiversity, and I was expecting this video to get it wrong because the misinformation is so prevalent, but you did a great job!
Bees and other pollinating insects are stressed out. Why? Because of petrol-based chemical compounds that are being broadcast not only in ag, but in other areas of manufacturing also. All petrol-based chemical compounds are carcinogenic, and these pollinating insects are desperately attempting to survive!! Just as when humans get stressed, they are much more susceptible to disease and parasites. This has a great deal to do with why bee colonies are dying out!!💜🏋️♥️
Education and Awareness important. Not just Headlines from the Internet. Awesome video
“Another great day of saving the beeees”
that chicken-honeybee analogy is so good. some million bird/thousand bee species and people are hyper focusing on the one that needs absolutely no help.
Bees really are an important part of our ecosystem
'It was another day of saving the beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees'
Because we got to be saved.
Got to save ourselves.
Keep it simple and light.
Love this coverage. Please say and cover more about neonics!
I'm amazed by how often I find species of bees I haven't seen before in parks in Toronto every time I go out looking for them with my camera 🤩🐝
“…leave things BEE” Great Closing
❤👍🏻
Its also not just bees either. All sorts of insects (even wasps (naming them because they get so much hate ususally)) are pollinating a variety of different plants. Its really shouldnt bee "save the (honey) bees", but save the insects.
Very depressing fact: over the last 30 years we lost 80% of all biomass of insects in the world
Bees must be safeguarded. They are crucial workers who contribute to the ecosystem's ability to sustain other living things.
I appreciate that you leave us with more information to read and learn. thanks.
Bees are vital for food production all over the world; not just in the United States.
2:43 Wow!… who knew that Oreos, Doritos, hamburgers, hotdogs, Hersheys kisses, and Twinkies came from bees!
Yes, and twinkies can only be pollinated by the elusive white bumblebee.
I’ve been paying more attention to the bumblebee and have been learning about them on my own and don’t see much about them online they do have ground hives and over winter really well
Thanks for giving attention to the "other" bees.
I am glad that my favorite bee, the Eastern Carpenter Bee _(Xylocopa virginica)_ isn't in any danger of extinction. The males of this species are one of my favorite harbingers of spring -- when I see them patrolling their territories (and hurling themselves headlong at anything flying through that airspace), I know warmer days are soon to come.
Great presenter, and production. Super important subject.
i know
I live in Southern Arizona. When I moved here over a decade ago, I had hundreds of bees that came to pollinate my aloe vera plants. Over the years less and less bees would visit. (i always put water out for them).
This year, I had no bee visitors. Truly sad.
Good show, Kim! We have "no mo' month". Let grass etc. grow with no mowing for 30 days. It looks ragged, but works!
As an heirloom farm who uses no chemicals in farming, it's easy to see all the different beneficial bees and parasitic wasps in the garden, they love it!
There are a lot of honeybees where I live. The carpenter bee population has seen a massive decline in my area after I removed their nests from my house and mailbox three times.
This is really good info thank you!!!
Glad this topic is finally being talked about. My dad is a beekeeper and this topic is all too close to home for me
Something you could have mentioned: livestock requires 70% of all global agricultural land (including land used to grow all the crops to feed the animals). We can lessen the farm area for animal feed by eating more plants thereby returning more existing agricultural land back to nature for native bee preservation
Two of the best ways to reduce the amount of land that you use is to 1) become vegan, as animal agriculture is an irder of magnitude less efficient than eating crops directly due to energy loss across each triphic levels. This means that significantly more farmland is needed to grow crops for animals than if we ate the crops directly. 2) Live in an apartment. Denser cities means less urban sprawl and thus less land use (as well as a host of other environmental benefits).