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.
In a local wild park, an amateur entomologist called my attention to "blue bees" that were pollinating some blooming wildflowers that were...blue of course. I think we don't notice wild bees since most of them don't live as colonies. I'm also a fan of leaf-cutter bees for the perfectly round patterns they cut in young tree leaves to make their nests! (commenting from Japan)
Carpenter bees are a bitch to deal with though. Cutter bees are chill though. Locally its either have bees or hornets so I prefer the bees winning the majority. Wasps pop up now and then, but i only see hornets and bees having it out over territory or something. Bc ive seen them fight each other.
It's wild to think that we grew up with large wild bees but only the honey bees are the most exposed from the media. When I was little, I grew up with larger wild bees. I only know honey bees because of the media.
My chickens are free range and are fed decent food and grains. I feed them on the back lawn. This year, I am also feeding sparrows, at least 50, chaffinches, thrush, starlings and some odd birds I have not identified. Oh, native birds feed here as well. The smaller birds only come down to eat when the chickens are feeding as they have learnt that the hens will give alarms about predators. If I am late feeding, the tree is just about jumping off the ground with all the chirping. That same tree has bumble bees in it at the moment. So… it’s a good thing to keep chickens to save wild birds.
@@nitharshnirajagopal4575 that a huge number and most if not all, live miserable lives. My ones are kept here until they die naturally. I don’t eat them. Currently I have three older birds and six 7 months old. These are the egg layers.
@@nitharshnirajagopal4575 what happens when you need to increase monoculture production by 100x then because everyone is eating only vegetables lmao yeah no, eating only plant based is not the way to go stop spreading your nonsense it’s not sustainable like you guys always claim it is. You haven’t seen what happens if 7 billion people eat only carrots and celery. Plus the deficiencies 99% of people would have
I'm really glad you guys made this. I've been studying bees and wasps independently for some time and I think it's important that people know that honeybees are invasive. In October, when I heard the American Bumblebee disappeared from 8+ states, that's what I cared about most. Bumblebee keeping is actually becoming a valid form of beekeeping, despite not being profitable and I really like that.
Same here. I've been studying insects in general for over 25 years, also independently. I have seen this thing time and time again. It's always, "save the honeybee", or, "save the monarchs", or something like that. It trains people to only culture their properties for a tiny set insects of the many thousands of insects that are real movers and shakers in the world. I just wish the myopia would stop. Insects have so much diversity and beauty and character and we are killing them all off.
I was at an agricultural conference a few years ago where a guy was talking about how we didn't need to worry about saving the bees since honey bees are doing better than ever. During the Q&A I asked him about native and wild bees and he admitted to not knowing about them. I think more farmers need resources outside of the pesticide companies that have basically taken over. It was pretty clear no one there had realized that the problem went beyond cultivated species.
@Armament Armed Arm No, you misunderstand me. As in, governmental politics. Especially the American kind where everyone gets worked up about it. I hate that shit because 1, I have no interest in it because I see it pointless, and 2, I am not American.
Ya I didn’t know this info - first time I heard this. I’m not an expert, but all I heard about was save the bees and colony collapse. This video was very educational. My favorite bee is probably the bumble bee btw.
@@Auganemanon the reason why politics are talked about is because that’s where many of these problems come from no matter what country city or continent u live in a majority of problems in your country has to do with your politics specifically ur local politics.
Planting “bee friendly” plants in my yard has given myriad species of pollinators a new place to forage. The variety of bees and wasps now visiting is astounding.
me too, native plant species to my region. And as upcycle mentions, never use any pesticides. One huge source in my yard for all types of wild bees and wasps is a foxgrape vine I finally let grow out after initially trying to get rid of it when I bought the house. Now every year I have about 20 feet of thick vines on the rails of my deck, and tons of bees and wasps feeding, and later the song birds (I'm a big birder) when it fruits. I've seen a myriad of species of bees and wasps. And zero stings! The 'bee shelter' made of stacks of bamboo is very popular in my yard for all the solitary bees and wasps, too. Also, paper wasp nests under my eaves and front porch are allowed to stay til the queen leaves in fall.
Same, I just have a balcony, but it's amazing how many different pollinators it can attract. For example, since last year, my balcony has been visited by 9 different bumblebee species so far!
Many spices like thyme, rosemary, oregano, marjoram, satureja, sage are amazing to have. They’re awesome to cook with but all different kinds of pollinators love them. Take a look at a flowering thyme. Literally hundreds of bees can be on one plant at a time. It’s amazing to watch.
I always thought: What difference does my tiny garden make? Then I put up one of those bee hotels, and wild bees started to come to our garden. We added more bee hotels, left "wild corners" in the garden, put in a tiny pond and started planting insect friendly plants (native to our region) and now we have loads of different species. There is a noticeable difference. This year we had a small hornets nest. I'm terribly scared of wasps and was scared when I saw the hornets but they totally left us in peace. But we didn't have a wasp problem this year because the hornets scare them off. :-D Also, I learned a bit about wasps and saw we had a lot of solitary ones that are not as aggressive as the standard variety that forms hives. I left out small dishes with water for insects to drink from in hot summers and they were visited by a large number of solitary wasps. Scared the hell out of me at first but now I got to know them better and they are not aggressive and will leave you alone. It's basically only two varieties of wasps here in the region that will pester you. And they are indiscriminate when it comes to food sources. They will eat human food and become aggressive and annoying. I'm no expert but I have the feeling that those varieties will thrive because they are more versatile and the wild ones will decline. A bit like birds in big cities where only sparrows and pidgeons stand a chance up to the point where they become pests. It is absolutely worthwhile to make your garden a wildlife habitat. There is so much to see in our garden now. We have a wide variety of birds coming to bathe in our pond, we have lots of different butterflies, bees, bumble bees, hover flies, even dragonflies. We have small bats, beetles, etc. And the ground is full of earthworms here, which is a good sign as far as I know. I absolutely love my wild garden and the wild bee population increases with every year. We had to put up a new bee hotel this year. :-D
That sounds lovely! I hope that you continue to document the flora and the visitors you receive - people often underestimate the value of having that data, as well as their own impact on the environment around them. Thank you for making yours a positive one!
I agree! I live in Florida which have over 300 of solitary bees! I have learned that you can go to construction sites and pick up discarded wood and find people who grow bamboo (the fast growing thin kid) that they cut back and throw away all the time. Combine these two and you can make your own bee hotels for free and make them for others as well, just cost a little of time to make!
My parents have a lovely little garden in the front yard and damn near a forest on the back, every summer for the past 15 years we are visited by a whole host of bees and insects :)
This is such important information. It saddens me that the majority of people don’t know about this, and are only focused on the honey bees. As a person who loves zoology, biology and animals in general, the extinction/endangerment of these species and many more breaks my heart. I hope we’ll take the necessary steps in saving these precious animals.
Why would the majority of ppl know this? That's like saying it's sad the majority of ppl don't know flaming bend their legs at the ankle no the knee or it's sad ppl don't know octopuses can taste with their arms or owls don't have eyeballs. Most ppl aren't going to know that because most ppl aren't keeping bee's, or interacting with insets. It's sad specialists don't know, but it's not sad most people don't know.
well, when a bee comes to my garden how am I supposed to tell if it's a honey bee or regular bee when they all look the same? at least in my country, I won't stop any from feeding, I've got enough plants that they can't even get to all of them,
@@trevnti He finds it sad that the majority of people don't know about the big issue we're all facing world wide of many species declining world wide due to human actions such as putting pesticides on everything, because if more people knew, we could actually collectively contribute and make sure the ecosystem recovers and becomes more diverse again. Our declining eco system will bring huge problems to everyone and every species... Your argument about it being the same as saying most people also don't know octopuses can taste with their arms doesn't make sense as there's a difference. The majority of people don't need to know octopuses can taste with their arms, but the majority of people should know (or atleast the farmers and people who do things that hurt other species without their own awareness) that they are causing an issue they won't be able to fix if they continue doing whatever it is that hurts them. The information's value is greater than your octopus fact for example, it doesn't threaten the octopuses that humans don't know they can taste with their arms the same way it creates issues for the whole ecosystem because a ton of people don't know they're messing up the natural balance if you get what I'm grasping at?
Thank you! People were making a big deal about honey bees, but don't care at all for native pollinators. I am most concerned with endemic species surviving.
@@OneAdam12Adam They're too busy trying to scare people with politics to care about real science. There's no money for them in fixing real problems. The people who write the paychecks for *all* forms of modern research always have an agenda. The truth and consequences are nothing but a hindrance to power.
Awesome video. At my company Avallen Spirits we do everything we can to support wild bees who pollinate the apples we use in our product and educate people about the wonders of bumblebees, leaf cutter bees, Mason bees, miner bees, scissor bees and more. They are so beautiful and do important for all life on earth
They're the only pollinators that make honey though. And they are more efficient at pollinating than most other bugs too, especially since a lot of those other bugs are actually harmful, i.e. mosquitoes.
I’m glad I found this video! I took a biology class back in college taught by an extremely knowledgeable archaeologist. He was the first to tell me people are worried about the wrong bees. This was around 8-ish years ago, and I’ve been trying to warn people since, but I’m not very good at communicating the problem. Now I have something I can link them to so they can better understand what I’m talking about. Thank you for all your hard work and research!
I’ve been co existing with a bumble bee hive under my porch. I even save the ones that get stuck inside my porch. They’ve NEVER EVER stung me once. It’s insane. Theyll be buzzing around my front door, and if I just walk in they don’t bother me, and I don’t bother them. Crazy how docile they can be if you are too!
There used to be a tree in my Highschool that would attract bumble bees right next to our classroom. I agree, they’re harmless fluffy bugs that‘ll sometimes buzz up to our windows to say hi. It’s the hornets we‘d have to look out for
@@LibraryofAcousticMagic3240 Fair enough, luckily we'd rarely ever get wasps and they'd stay far away if we ever did. The only reason hornets were a problem to us is that they'd go in and around the classroom and disrupt the class since most were scared of them (including the teachers.)
I have a relatively small garden, a good portion of it is patio. The part that is patio has all kinds of flowers in planters on it and the rest is covered in salad and veg. I've noticed that I get about 10 different types of bees in the garden, rarely see a honey bee, they all seem to have their own favorite flower. This video has explained why.
If you’re interested in bees consider reading “Buzz- The Nature and Necessity of Bees” by Thor Hanson! It goes into more detail about why certain bees only visit certain flowers ect! It is a really well written book that I’ve really enjoyed and learnt a whole lot from!
I used to be afraid of bees and wasps. Now I consider myself luck to have so many bee and wasp visitors to my little green oasis in the city. My mind boggles and my heart warms that I have gotten to meet the littlest of the bees, the biggest bumbles and a mutlitude of surprisingly reasonable wasps.
@Madlum Sibul nothing I wrote implied that I wanted to domesticate anything wild or to use for production of anything, how come we can eat so we'll using wild buffalo, elk, deer, n a on , politicians are the problem and all whom vote for them money lovers
Simply put, biodiversity and bee hotels. After moving towns, I'm finally in a spot where I see wild bees visiting mine. I'm glad there's growing awareness!
my parents started a pollinator garden at their old house. almost the entire side yard was taken up by it, and the people they sold it to loved it, so hopefully they will continue it.
I used to have wood-boring bees at an old house. They didn’t ever bore into the house, but they did bore into the pieces of driftwood my dad would bring home and use to carve or support plants. I loved those bees.
Yes, so to say, those are carpenter bees, there are mason bees inhabit as you would guess bricks & concrete, soil, arboreal, ... As you inform there are ways to harmonize!
@@dumpsterfire3214 Carpenter bees look so scary being big fast moving shiny black bullets but yeah they are actually super chill. I like the leaf-cutter and sweat bees
Super glad that I didn't intrude on a couple of solitary leafcutter bees that were nesting in old screw holes in the wall at my home. I realised they have a really docile nature after I researched them and got to know them. They sealed the nests over now with chewed leaves ready for next years offspring to emerge.
It's possible to build nesting holes for many of these other bee species. Some people just drill various diameter and depth holes into blocks of wood, or the tops of wood posts. As long as it's untreated raw wood, it should be good for them to use.
@@jokerace8227, Yeah, I've seen something similar. I ordered a bee hotel today. It's basically a wooden box with removable pieces of bamboo inside that I intend to put in the yard. I read that, after the larvae turn into cocoons, they become dormant and hibernate through the winter. I'm just a little unsure of the metamorphosis period while it's still summertime; I'm wondering if it's likely that they'll emerge late summer?
@@tadpole9264 Because we caused them to go exinct. I agree we now have to step up and try and fix the issues, but we can't lose sight that we created those same issues (lobbyists for the agriculture, dairy, and meat industries, as well as the politicians that are in the pockets are hugely to blame).
When I lived in a house I had solitary Mason Bees set up nests in old drill holes where the sun warmed the bricks. Everyone told me to spray, I just left them, even planted some bee friendly native plants. It was fascinating to watch them, never bothered anyone.
One apartment I lived in for 8 years there was a bees nest on the roof somewhere. I didn't have many window screens so Bees would occasionally fly in\out My apartment for up to an hour, then leave, though I have a mild fear of bees I didn't mind if it was a couple to a few inside, (I had alot of house plants). When it would be too many bees, I would have to work on getting them outside or unfortunately kill them if I had trouble getting them to leave.
@@MemoGrafix I try not to to kill anything that gets in the house but I do have screens. I'll just take a small, clear plastic container and put it over whatever got in. Then I slide a piece of cardboard underneath, take the whole thing outside and release. Even yellow jackets and they scare the heck out of me!
@@juliustime7809 I have friendly wasps living on my balcony. Since I planted bee friendly flowers on my balcony, there's always at least three wasps sitting on the flowers. This is a really nice kind... if they have the choice between you, your food and a flower they will always choose the flower.
I never put up honeybee hives but I do put up solitary bee houses and mine are always full. When I go out to my squash in the morning there are 2-3 bees on every flower and needless to say I’ve got tons of squash as a result. People need to learn this information asap!
@@jesuschristislord77733 they are truly a nightmare, I've only tangentially dealt with. some people are very misguide and drunk on every little scrap of power.
Being a bee keeper and telling people to save native bees is like being a chainsmoker telling people to not smoke... it's good advice, but a little hypocritical, isn't it. Your little family business is contributing to the problem. Unless you only keep native bees, in which case, disregard the remark.
Thanks for sharing this valuable information. Here in Japan we are observing the same problem: every year we’re observing less pollinators and the use of pesticides is excessive. It would be great to add captions in many languages to reach more people around the globe.
@@okyoky405 I think pesticides play a huge role (contributing to the growth of super-weeds and super-pests, resistant to the pesticides and herbicides we use, requiring higher doses to kill them the following year), but monocultures literally remove the source of food for wild native insects. We have monocultures of corn to feed our meat animals, which need increasing amounts of food and water as the rest of the world catches up to North America and Europe, which means we need even more feed crops to feed those animals (look into why the Amazon rain forest is being cleared: to make room for feed crops). On a smaller scale, cleaning up gardens in the fall and spring to cut back perennials and grasses also destroys potential habitat for our wild native insects, and I can't count how many customers I've had asking for herbicide to kill "weeds" like daisys, clover and dandilions in their lawns (I work in a plant nursery) because they want "perfect", completely sterile lawns.
@@okyoky405 Pesticides, mites all sorts of different reasoning for the decline of bees. Of course pesticides weaken the bees which makes them more susceptible to these pests.
I have spent the last few years trying to convince anybody who will listen. I noticed the wild bees were out pollinating our home orchard long before we ever saw honey bees. I planted food crops for the wild bees and severely limited pesticide use. As a result, we now have a healthy ecosystem of bees, wasps, flies, and beetles. Bees are not the only pollinators. My fav 3 are: Megachile perihirta, Sphex ichneumoneus, and Agapostemon virescens. I live in PNW. 0:48 Those are calendula flowers, and wild bees love them. They love most members of the family Asteraceae. It includes calendula, aster, cosmos, daisy, marigold, sunflower, and many others. They also love crocus, willow, pussywillow, cane berries, sedum succulents, open-faced dahlias, lavender, mint, lemon balm, catnip, sage, rosemary, foxglove, mint, thyme, basil, weigela, laurel, privet, bee balm, cactus, and dandelion. For most wild bees, the pollen is more important than the nectar because they do not produce honey or comb. The trick is to plant a variety, so that there is always a useful plant in bloom.
@@13bunnylove13 Your post is nothing but platitudes. Bees won't save the planet, and this video's ideas to save wild bees require cutting back on food production to the point of where half the world's population would starve to death.
@@FerretyZebra No, actually it would require the opposite. Industrial farming and monoculture are far more efficient than local small farms and polyculture.
The apple tree bee is also way fluffier than the honeybee. Save our fluffy bees from extinction. Also save non fluffy bees too. You might attract some butterflies and pretty moths in the process if you're planting flowers for them to sip on.
Is there anything in nature that is a monoculture? Even with ground elder, which spreads rapidly underground, there's room for other plants (morning glory for example), and eventually shrub and tree seeds are planted by squirrels or dropped in bird droppings, which can help smother the other plants and allow others to grow in their place. Humans certainly know how to make a mess of things.
I have an isolated field of spontaneous wild flowers up at 1200m. Several years ago I filmed the flowers from ground level. I was stunned by the variety and wealth of insects. Not a single industrial bee to be seen. Then a couple of years ago a neighbour brought in half a dozen industrial hives a mile or so away. For the last two years you can only now see industrial honey bees, hundreds of them. I started looking for information about this and this is sadly one of the very few videos on this topic to be found. A very informative and important video.
We have bee plant and there are sooo many bees in my backyard, I like bumblebees the most. Since there just so fluffy and they are very friendly you can even touch one if you're careful enough. normally around this time of year there are a lot of yellow jackets in our garden, but now it's just these beautiful bees.
By leaving some short tree snags, some stacks of old firewood, down trees, some straw bales on our properties one creates habitat for the myriad of pollinators. Does not take much effort. The pursuit of "tidiness" can eliminate habitat.
@@killdizzle So what? Compared to the possible breakdown of our food supply, snakes and rats in your backyard are merely an inconvenience. Go get yourself some cats and be done with it. Sorry If you live in Australia or some other crazy place
@@layla8830 Cats are great to have outside if you want to kill your local native birds. Seriously, they are the number one threat to local birds, and the main reason bird populations are dropping like mad. Build habitat for insects and birds, leave your garden looking a mess in winter and leave spring cleanup until later (eg. don't cut back perennials), and learn about local rodents and snakes and wildlife to decrease your (mostly) irrational fears of them (they'll attack when threatened, many aren't even active during the day). It's their world we're destroying.
@@tefroqr3994 When did I say I was afraid of rodents and snakes? My garden looks like what you described. I was merely presenting an easy solution for someone who does seem like they have a dislike for these animals.
For about five years we let most of the lawn in our garden grow wild instead of mowing it. By now there are so many different wildflowers in addition to our veggies and fruits and they all attract different types of bees. This year we had two couples of black carpenter bees. I didn't even know those excited.
This should be everywhere! We should be learning about what bees, wasps and hornets are native to our areas of the world and how we can protect them. Happy planting everyone! 🌱
Wow this was very informative. I had the complete wrong picture in my head. Thank you for this, I am planning on starting my own little garden in my yard so I will now be sure to use native species of plants and logs with holes in them. Again, incredible video ❤️
Yes, informative indeed. I for one am baffled by how these mainstream terds will accept depictions of ancient Egyptians working with bees as empirical evidence that Egypt did in fact have bee keepers, but when there is a clear depicition of a UFO, or clear depictions of NONE human entities in Egypt, these mainstream dingle berries jump to "ITS-JUST-A-MYTH MODE." Sorry, off topic, but worth mentioning... *Forces self to continue worthless upload, only to dislike at the end and have gained absolutely zero knowledge*
@@kundermill2892 bruh, I get the reasoning you are using but there is a big flaw. Humans tell stories. Both true and made up. The artistic depictions made by ancient Egyptians are telling their stories. Some of everyday life and others of their mythology. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Thank you! Most people don't know about bachelor bees, they made up something like 98% of North American bees. They typically live underground so any time we till the soil, they all lose their homes. When we cut our grass, we suck them up. I've never understood the fascination with the honey bees while ignoring the bachelor bees. Bachelors are native, the honey bees aren't. Bachelors also tend to sting less because they aren't defending a queen and colony.
This video educated me so much. It just further emphasizes how critical native plant species are for our environment. I can’t wait to learn more from you guys!
My neighbors give me a hard time about my yard because its not all trimmed and neat but i get so many bugs and birds in my yard. An old unused shed in the back is home to many large bumble bees and the number of fireflys is amazing
I have babyboomers in my neighbourhood who still use Round Up pesticide. I let my garden grow as wild as I can. But they even mowe part of my garden when I am not home.
@@ramonwiltsmy neighbors hate my yard but i have the coolest insects! Praying mantis, huge garden spiders, giant southern stag beetles and even some rino beetles! Theyre just mad our yards dont look like their cookie cutter, home and garden, HGTV nonsense😂
Put a sign in the middle: Bee Paradise. It may annoy them even further, but maybe start the thinking process. You are doing your citizens duty of preserving natural wild life.
Interesting fact that people often overlook is how great Flies are for pollination, even in this video some of the footage was infact of Bee mimicking Hoverflies. Many species of Fly will be active at lower temperatures than Bees, extending pollination time throughout the day/into cold seasons. In fact, within the colder regions on Earth where Bees have a hard time surviving, Flies are the dominant pollinators.
Wasps as well. A lot of people wrongly assume wasps have no ecological value because they don’t pollinate, when wasps are key pollinators (with many being species-specific pollinators), and the more generalized wasps are also key predators in ecosystems. Incidentally, the most terrifying wasp of all-the Asian giant hornet-plays a key role in defending native pollinator populations in East Asia (especially the Asiatic honeybee, a non-domesticated honeybee species native to Asia and occasionally farmed for honey as well). Asian giant hornets will tackle most insects as prey, but one behaviour that differs from other colonial wasps is preying on entire colonies of other eusocial insects, including both Asiatic and European honeybees. Asiatic honeybees are adapted for dealing with these massed attacks (up to 30+ hornets systematically butchering every bee they come across and taking every adult bee, larvae, and pupae to feed to their own young), while European honeybees are only capable of fending off hornets that pick off one bee at a time (due to having evolved in Europe, where none of the hornets launch massed attacks targeting entire colonies of bees). Thus, the existence of Asian giant hornets puts the native Asiatic honeybee (and other native pollinators) at an advantage over the nonnative European honeybee.
Thank you for spreading this word! I can't tell you how many times I've been attacked when I've posted actual data about the number of honeybee hives, trying to answer people who in all innocence have believed that they were catastrophically decreasing. With over 2 million views, this video has done infinitely more to educate people than any of us could ever do ourselves!
@@DerSaa Der Saa, you're extremely rude implying I'm not used to reading/lazy, when in fact, it's more than likely I've read more than you in our lives. That's Dr. Rosa for you.
Same here. Many "beekeepers" do not like it when you tell them this, particularly the larger ones who are making good profits. They want to greenwash and say how they are saving the planet when actually they are doing more harm than good by selling backyard beehives, bees, equipment, paid beekeeper classes, etc. It's an entire industry that they are making money from at the expense of native bees. I have started to copy and paste this video and put it in the comments on all the honeybee/beekeeping ads I get on facebook (which is a lot), lol. I figure the more people that know this the better. Some of them even block me because they don't want their unwitting clients who are buying bees and trying to do backyard beehives to know the truth and harm their business model by seeing this video or other articles I post. Oh well, lol. We should focus on removing our useless lawn and replacing with native pollinators to provide habitat and food sources, rather than adding more backyard hives.
THANK YOU! I have been telling people this for years, my husband is a beekeeper and he has a bee removal company. Honey bees are rampant here, and they are aggressive. They also out compete our natural insects heavily. It’s so sad but everyone is so stuck on misinformation that they won’t listen even when we try to educate them.
At our old place in California we got carpenter bees galar. These big black bees that loved to pollinate our flowers we put down along with the wild peas that grew.
One point I wish you would make at the end of the video is about cleaning the bee houses. A lot of people don't know that the little bumble bee or carpenter bee houses with the drilled wood or bamboo needs to be cleaned once a year to avoid pests and diseases from flourishing thus harming the bees you want to save. Also a lot of bees nest in the ground and as a result mass grading development, insensitive lawn care, and pesticides harm those bees alongside cicadas and lightning bugs.
Yes, so important! What many people also don’t know about those bee houses: if holes are drilled with the grain into a spruce log it’s of NO use for the bees. It MUST be hard wood with holes drilled perpendicular to the grain, otherwise the holes are too rough and hurt the bee‘s wings and moisture can enter much more easily, causing mold on the brood.
I'm from Chile. I remember being a child, playing hide and seek in my grandma's farm and found orange bumblebees (Bombus dahlbomii, one of the biggest bumblebee in the world), at first I was scared AF, that thing is huge. But then I realized they were harmless, even friendly (at least that's what 10y/o me thought). Few months after, a colony of yellow jacket settled in, I never saw the orange bees again. It's been ten years I guess, and I have not seen a Bombus dahlbomii since, I've been through multiple national parks in my country, multiple farms, different places. Not a single one. My friend which is a few years older than me saw ONE last year, she was so happy. The Bombus dahlbomii is in extinction risk due to the introduction of the European bumblebee, which is sad, different organizations had asked the government to stop the importation of honey bees and they don't listen.
Oh no! I've seen one of those on the mountain. Just one, just once. It was HUGE! And yes, they certainly ARE 'friendly', lol! It wouldn't leave me alone. But I didn't know what it was or how endangered it was. I'm sad to hear it used to be such a common sight in Japan :(
I've always loved bumblebees. I take care of all the ones I can, at least. Making sure there are plats with flowers in colors that are easy for them to see and feeding them when they're sluggish or dying, and stuff. They're my little friends.
Except all those lawsuits that are continuing to happen throughout the world against the pesticide companies for causing cancer in humans. Yes bees are important but humans are more important. If you save the humans - you'll save the bees
@@faithreturns333 noone is "more important".. And before you jump out of your good skin, let me explain, lol. We all depend on eachother.. wild plants, animals, birds, insects, etc.. it is all an intricate system, and symbiosis. That said, I would kill any bee to save my children:P I hope you see my point? We need tostop focusing on just one part of thewhole( humans), and start looking at how it all fits together.. lots to fix, and a lot we need to stop using.. like plastic,
@@Goldenhawk583 in Arizona I dealt with killer bees. These are manufactured bees. I noticed that this documentary didn't even approach the subject. Have you ever had a swarm of killer bees in your backyard? I have and the insect specialist in Tempe Arizona was an absolute Freak Show but he knew a lot about bees! Technically we need bees but artificial pollination has been used for centuries. It just takes more work on the part of the humans. I agree that pollution is an absolute problem and yes humans are a problem with pollution. The main problem is humanity is out of balance with its creator and the creation. We stopped teaching the Bible which is the world history and Mankind. That's why you see atheistic idiots creating Alchemy Pharmaceuticals which is out of balance with nature and Nature's God. If we would get back into balance with our very Creator then things would be better
@@faithreturns333 The bible has no place in my life as any teaching one should obey. Sure, it has a few good points, but the massmurder, and 99% threats of deaths makes it a horrible book. I am 100% sure, that plenty of these crooks, that kill and poppute and lie.. all swear they are christians. Please.. the first part of your comment makes a lot of sense.. but then jumping to the bible.. with all its genocidal murders, the use human sacrifice, tha total lack of scientific understanding ( hares do NOT chew cud). Child abuse and total lack of respect for anything female ( fathers can sell their daughters as sex slaves?) lets stop here.
How about a quick follow-up video detailing more things people can do to help 🐝🌺 This was only briefly covered at 7:32 Great video and glad to see there have been so many views!!
....I never actually considered wild bees, and didn't know honeybees were such a threat. I will definitely pass this along, and see what I can do to support them more. Thank you!
honeybees aren't a huge threat, it's the pesticides which made farmers dependent on using more and more honeybees.... just an average home gardener/farmer having several hives isn't a problem, nor do they take too much nectar
Yeah... They're not a threat. Healthy bee colonies, in general are not spreading illness. I don't disagree with saving wild bees, but show me one bee keeper with colonies of anything other than honey bees.
Thank you so much for making this!❤️❤️ I’m a botanist that grows native flowers for native pollinators. And the over use of honey bees is leading to so many problems
There is a TH-cam channel here in Brasil that not just only encourages the protection of native bees by planting specific plants, but also teaches the cultivation of hives of native species and explains how ordinary people in cities and neighborhoods can create and extract honey with no problem as native bees here don't have stings. The channel is called "Abelhando Mundo Afora".
2 weeks ago when I was looking for the plants in my garden I saw a huge black bumblebee-kind of Bee. I didn't knew what it was but in this video their was a brief shot of it so I Googled it. Turned out it was a blue wood bee. I didn't knew about the Different wild bees and now I am fascinated ☺️ (greetings from Germany)
At my grandparents house in Idaho, they have some bumble bees that are absolutely humongous, almost a full inch and a half long. So far they’ve held strong for the past 10 years, and hopefully it stays that way.
I have MONSTER bumbles at my place. We're down in Utah, so probably the same species as what you're seeing at your grandparent's house. They're almost totally black, and terrifying, but don't really bother anyone.
@@SilverFlame819 i think that would be carpenter bee and not bumble. They look alike yet carpenter bee is bigger and with black ‘body' and much louder when flying. First year i am doing gardening and it is amazing how many new knowledge I’ve gained. Truly a blessing.
I spotted a blue carpenter bee last year in a dead tree in my garden. This year I have two of the same species nesting in the tree. They look like huge black and blue bumblebees and are pretty cute. I also once spotted 4 sleeping bees in a flower and googled and could find out that sometimes very young bees sleep together in one flower, how fascinating!
Good information. However, honey bees pollinate 80% of flowering plants. Including the plants you said they can't. Not saying they're more important than others but just as important. apples, melons, cranberries, pumpkins, squash, broccoli, and almonds, etc. are all pollinated by honey bees.
I've been thinking about this. It seems to be another "monoculture" that might displace diverse wildlife. But this is the first documentary ive ever heard of. Thank you DW!
People helping out bees is really good, but it sounds like we need more systemic solutions. Maybe regulation and programs to fight these problems on an industrial level.
I'd rather people just start using native plant species and just care for their local environment. I hope in the next 10 years most lawn grass around the states dies off and is replaced by better crops. We don't need lawn grass all it does is just look green and nice trimmed cut. We need more environmentally sustainable yards.
You are correct, blaming honey bees for the problems that face all bee species is like blaming one species of dinosaur for the giant rock that is about to smash into their planet.
Scientists estimate that bees have been around for an estimated 130 million years, appearing, at least evolutionarily speaking, not so long after the first flowers bloomed. Once these two famous partners teamed up, they embarked on a shared journey of rapid speciation together resulting in the approximately 20,000 species of bees and astounding 400,000 species of flowering plants that have been identified so far. [WWF]
Today, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 50% higher than in 1750, far exceeding the natural changes over at least the past 800,000 years. [United Nations]
We used to have lawns near our homes over the years and never used pesticides. They were never big and we always planted other plants to go along with them.
Thankfully my landlady let's her whole backyard go wild. So its full of hundreds if not thousands of pollinators every day. Many ppl wish to do this, but often city's have arbitrary by-laws about not cutting grass or letting a yard go.
I have to keep the front in some semblance of order, but I tried letting my backyard go without mowing for a year. No kids or pets to worry about. It's surrounded by a high wood fence, so no nosey neighbors to rat me out to the city. I ended up with lots of wild flowers (and of course some not-so-great burrs). The grass got up to about chest-high in some parts, then died in the winter and added to the height (and apparently nutrients) of the soil. Everything came back even greener than before, with more wild grass than burrs this time. The sound of crickets at night is almost deafening. I'm hoping to see more lightning bugs this year too.
"Many ppl wish to do this, but often city's have arbitrary by-laws about not cutting grass or letting a yard go." ^this, 120%, currently living in a neighborhood where local zoning laws won't let us have our front & back yards go wild, so our next best thing that we could do was plant non-crop trees
The grass laws aren’t arbitrary. Long grass encourages mice, potentially venomous snakes, ticks, and mosquitoes which can become huge problem in human-dense spaces. Especially the latter two which can spread blood-born diseases. Ultimately, for urban & suburban areas, a mix between a controlled lawn and wild garden are what’s best. It gives you a little space to not get chewed on while also giving the local fauna their own space as well as opposed to letting it all go wild.
I'm doing my Bachelor thesis on a related topic, and this is exactly what most people get wrong. With the rise of commercial reared bumblebees, the problem is only expected to expand. Especially in South America, bombus terrestris ( the European bumblebee) is driving the native bumblebees to extinctions.
Bombis species have notably been regarded as threatened or absent amid regions of Ohio, but maybe not aware to detect or chronological decline but maybe inhospitable habitat. That's an interesting comparison with your info regarding that Bumblebee but likely reveals fitfullness & fulfillment of an econiche beside issues with introduction & invasiveness with anthropogenic catalyst & boost? Misinfo doesn't help so beware of various industries influences even on research. Arthropods to various families such as the winged (I'll leave to you for the Phylogeny but you will know) are among indicators to me of the enviro spheres.
I hope you include a whole section about how Mainstream Media is the leading cause about WHY people get this wrong. They don't tell whole stories, they just make sound-clips for people to feel like know-it-alls once they've learned all 30 seconds of information told (buffered with 4 minutes 30 seconds of stock photos) and think that's all to the world.
I'VE GOT A GIANT EMPTY BACKYARD I'M GONNA ADD SO MANY PLANTS FOR THOSE WILD BUDDIES AND I'LL PUT OUT A LITTLE BUFFET OF SUGAR WATER FOR IF THEY'RE TIRED. Are there any projects happening where I can donate to help research and protect the different bee species?
University of Florida (UF) Bee Biology Lab. They research both wild bees and honeybees; demonstrating negative effects of industrial farming on A. mellifera is as important to changing industry as proving that wild bees are more effective. Your county agriculture extension may have a local wildflower seed mix available.
The sugar water dish can help spread disease, stick to native wild flowers and appropriate nesting spots, like a sunny, open surface of unwashed sand = sand with mud or pieces of hardwood with the holes (6-8 millimeters) drilled perpendicular to the grain (= not like the logs shown in this video; this is important so that the bee‘s wings don’t get damaged when laying eggs into the holes and it also reduces the number of cracks through which moisture could access the larvae and kill them)
I grow tomatoes in my garden and also have a mint bush and there are just so many different species. I thought they were just flies doing mimicry, but after doing a bit of research I figured out they were wild bees. I only ever see honey bees in the beginning of June when there are dandelions growing.
We have tons of different types of "solitary bees" here in the Texas panhandle. I love to sit in my garden and watch the small bees do their job. They come in a vast array of colors and patterns. I do see some honey bees as well, but the solitary bees do the majority of the pollination in my garden.
I myself have noticed a variety of different species here in Georgia USA. There’s one bee that looks a lot like a honey bee but isn’t. It’s called a mason bee. They’re great pollinators, but you’ll see them a lot in mud pits. They almost never sting people. Pretty much harmless.
It's really sad to see insects and bugs number decreasing, I remember when I was a kid there would be tons of butterflies in my backyard, but now I rarely see a butterfly anywhere, I usually don't care about these stuff but when I was coming back home from school I saw a beautiful blue winged moth on the side of the road and it made me think about the beauty of nature I guess.
@@begemotowa Gmo has nothing to do with insects. It is a wide used term for genetically modified crops. This modification could be various things but one of the popular one is pesticide resistant ones that release something called CRY that deter insects naturally. It is the same as using pesticide but much more healthy. So banning them doesnt really change anything since if we dont use it then we will use pesticides.
@@The_unexplained "aOH NO the thing i dont even know the actual meaning of the word is dangerous Source:trust me,facebook said" your bananas,your tomatoes,Apples,chickens, and basically almost everything you ate in your life was gmo gmo just means it was modified by humans even these "non gmo"are gmo
I just bought bee food and a bee feeder today for the bees that live under my garage concrete for the last 3 years. I call it the "Oh Bee-have Diner". Haha
@@haruhirogrimgar6047 I could but I think that means flowers...I'm not much of a flower guy. I'm growing a Giant Sequoia in my yard though. 3 years and still growing. (It's the Midwest, so kinda a big deal)
Our city sprays for mosquitos every spring. This means other insects, like wild bees and butterflies get killed too. Since mosquitos are known to carry diseases, there is a give and take to the solution that means someone or something will inevitably suffer.
I have a tiny garden... I like it to be a bit on the wild side, ie. lots of 'weeds', herbs and wild flowers as well as 'standard' plants and small trees. I have all manner of pollinators that pop in to do their work, in the main I have no idea what they are... I am just chuffed they visit. I am sad at the urban wood fences and brick paving that have decimated the UK gardens over the past 20 years..... we can all do our bit. 'We have to get ourselves back to the garden'... lets do that soon eh! Thank you.
@@billwilson3665 Actually it's just nice to see more people gardening and putting pots on top of their bricked/ concrete paving...as a result of the C thing. We have hope eh!😁👍🏽💐🌻☀️
As a roofer. I see bees every day. Youd be surprised how many hives I see in people's bottom row of shingles, right at the gutters mostly. 4 out of 7 houses I'd say
Born in 85, I found my second wild bee nest ever this year. Finding it made me excited. It’s in a wooded area inside a hollow of a tree that isn’t very big. My first was when I was about 17. It was on an older tree much higher up very big. For about a foot wide there ran a strip from base to top we’re no bark grew. There high up bees had made home. It’s a wide change of environment between the two and so much time as well.
I think diversity of wild flowers also lowered, because of more technologically advanced farming. I remember often playing in meadows as a child and it was full of migrated crops, like lucernes and clovers, etc. As the farming style has changed, the amount of the flowers seem to be much lower too and there's much more tall, invasive species, as the land is not mowed or grazed as regularly, as it should be.
Here in Brasil we have more than 300 species of stingless native bees. Those can easily be keep and multiplied at racional boxes. This species varies from 2 millimeters to 1.5 centimeters, so they reach lots of kinds of native species. These bees can be keep at our backyards
I had no idea stingless bees were even a thing, I always thought that was like, one of the universal constants in how they got classified AS a bee in the first place?
Thank you for this. I feel like I've been saying this for years - there are far more bees than honey bees, and people seem to think that buying honey is somehow a solution to saving all the bees and by extension the whole planet. It's bizarre.
I have a good num of flowering plants that grow over the windows in my office. I notice wasps small bees flys all polinating. I see a few honey bees but the bumbles and small bees wasps are the hardest working the honey bees seem to cherry-pick what they want.
I keep honeybees in my yard, but I also put up boxes for the native bees, and they've been quite successful. I plan to build and install many more of the mason/leaf cutter bee houses.
Great video! My oldest son took an interest in this a while back and is installing native pollinator houses/habitats for solitary bees in our neighborhood and in conjunction with our local Botanical Gardens as his Eagle Scout project. Thank you for bringing more attention to these helpful insect friends!
Extremely important information. My neighbour just picked up beekeeping (without adding any flowering plants to feed them to his garden) and I already thought that this may be very bad news for the (sadly, few) surviving wild pollinators in the area. But now I know for sure. Thanks for the film. I hope many people will see it, understand the danger and ACT!
Because of my grandfather, I've been a beekeeper since I was 6 years old. Our club focuses a lot on saving not just honey bees, but also wild ones and hornets and the kind, so in my early 20's I decided to work on solutions as well. Everytime we thought we'd have achieved a breakthrough, it didn't even take a single year till our efforts turned out to be futile for all species except for maybe the honey bees in some cases. Nowadays I'm of the opinion that the only real solution would be enclosed vertical farming. This technique has a lot of benefits compared to traditional farming in itself in terms of agriculture, but with the pesticides gone in the outside world, the ecological impact could be way more positive than we think. Sadly, we will only turn to stuff like this when it's already too late and we have no other choice.
Thank you so much for this doc. There is so much nuance that gets left out in the Save the Bees! Discourse. People don’t realize that honeybees are invasive to the Americas. It’s frustrating that the public has been duped into “saving the bees” to support an industrial monoculture system that ultimately physically and chemically abuses honeybees. I was a backyard beekeeper for several years here in California. Despite the face that I adore beekeeping, I ultimately stopped as I became worried about our native pollinators having to compete with hives. Interestingly, I noticed our local Beek’s were not quite as worried about the honey bees dying out.
People like easy solutions. It's like electric cars, they buy an e-SUV and they think they are saving the world, when a smaller normal e-car would serve their needs 99% of the time and would require less resources to make and run.
You have hit the nail on the head with a couple of things here. The lack of nuance in discussing situations that we as a society seem to suffer from repeatedly. And the fact that it's not the honeybee that is the problem, but the way our civilisation does things.
Thank you for sharing your evolution and awareness about the priority we must place on native bees! As you know, European honeybees are linked with Big Ag, and legally, honeybees are classed as livestock. And we know the negative impact of non-native livestock on other wildlife, the stripping of lands, ultimate degradation of biodiversity and climate, and human health.
this is absolutely correct and I am a bee keeper. I have no idea how many different pollinators are on my small 48 acres but is a vast amount. multiple bumble bee types. many sweat bee types. corn flies. tiny bees. tiny flies. many types of butterflies and moths. I am blessed to be 3 miles from the closest commercial agriculture. I garden as organically as possible and try to be 100 percent pests control free meaning we don't use anything for insects nor remove by hand unless being devastated in crop damage which doesn't really happen after a few years. by providing buffer zones of wild flowers around each plot we provide areas for insects where predator insects and herbivore insects can maintain balance. we also monitor the wild pollinators to assure we aren't putting too many honey bees into circulation. only bushhog very early Spring and late fall before and after wildflowers bloom. one thing I don't have is monarch butterflies even though we have rescued many caterpillars from developments that were being bulldozed and put them on our milkweed. Don't understand why but is fact. we must as a society end our infatuation with golf course type lawns and allow diversity of native plants. we must each allow a small wild place in our lawns. we must educate ourselves because when the wild pollinators dissappear honey bees will not save us. my honeybees are for me to have honey and therapy as I love them. I don't have delusions that somehow honeybees are required for pollination.
This makes me appreciate my hometown a lot now. We stil see bumblebees, giant honeybees, wasps, hornets and honeybees here. I hope it stays this way for years to come
I live in New Mexico and the other day I took my dogs for a walk and saw honey bees, a carpenter bee and a hive of bumblebees, but the hive was being attacked by a bunch of other bees that were a bit smaller and hade brown wings, I saw a ton of dead and dying bumblebees. 😢🐝
@@fishyfish6510 I uploaded a video of one of the brown-winged bees still attacking the black-winged bees but I don't really know how to use the TH-cam Studio app on my phone so the quality seems really poor. 😓 Sorry but if anyone can tell me what kind of bees these are I would greatly appreciate it.
Working on it in back garden with mostly Bombus terrestris & lots of fruit trees. the queens arrived a few weeks ago and moved into the holes left by bank voles. I now this type of bumle bee is relativel cmmon but certainly beautiful. Great important message clearly explained - thanks to all experts concerned.
Pollinators play a crucial role in the ecosystem by facilitating the process of pollination, which is essential for the reproduction of plants. Pollinators are animals that transfer pollen from the male to the female part of a flower, allowing the fertilization process to take place. Some common pollinators include bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and bats. While pollinators are a diverse group of animals, they all share the common task of helping to ensure that plants can produce fruits, seeds, and new generations of plants. The importance of pollinators can be seen in the impact that they have on agriculture. Many of the crops that are grown for human consumption, such as fruits, vegetables, and nuts, rely on pollinators to produce their yields. Without pollinators, the yields of some crops could be severely diminished, leading to food shortages and increased food prices. In fact, it has been estimated that the value of pollinators to global food production is around $235 billion per year. However, the populations of many pollinators are currently under threat. Climate change, habitat loss, pesticide use, and disease are all factors that are contributing to declining populations of bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. This is a cause for concern, as the loss of pollinators could have serious consequences for both the environment and human wellbeing. There are several steps that can be taken to support and protect pollinators. One such step is to increase the availability of suitable habitats, such as wildflower meadows, hedgerows, and other natural areas. Planting native flowering plants in gardens and green spaces can also be beneficial. Additionally, minimizing pesticide use and promoting sustainable agriculture practices can help to protect pollinators from harm. In conclusion, pollinators are important animals that play a critical role in maintaining the health and diversity of ecosystems. Despite their importance, many pollinator populations are in decline, highlighting the need for action to protect and support these animals. By taking steps to promote habitat restoration and reduce pesticide use, we can help to ensure that pollinators continue to thrive and that the essential process of pollination can continue.
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.
My idoool
Dang, guess TH-cam’s finally recommending this video, what are the odds I watch it 35 minutes after you do?
TierZoo bee tierlist?
@@taylormcdaniel603 I’d watch that
Time to make an insect tier list!
In a local wild park, an amateur entomologist called my attention to "blue bees" that were pollinating some blooming wildflowers that were...blue of course. I think we don't notice wild bees since most of them don't live as colonies. I'm also a fan of leaf-cutter bees for the perfectly round patterns they cut in young tree leaves to make their nests! (commenting from Japan)
Carpenter bees are a bitch to deal with though. Cutter bees are chill though. Locally its either have bees or hornets so I prefer the bees winning the majority. Wasps pop up now and then, but i only see hornets and bees having it out over territory or something. Bc ive seen them fight each other.
Winston Churchill: We've butchered the wrong beehive. 😂
It's wild to think that we grew up with large wild bees but only the honey bees are the most exposed from the media.
When I was little, I grew up with larger wild bees. I only know honey bees because of the media.
Why don't ban GMO? Problem solved in a second.
@@The_unexplained Except that doesn't solve the problem at all? The issue is with unsustainable farming, not one of the 12 aspects of it.
Couldn't agree more and I'm a beekeeper.
Keeping honey bees is like keeping chickens to save wild birds.
My chickens are free range and are fed decent food and grains. I feed them on the back lawn. This year, I am also feeding sparrows, at least 50, chaffinches, thrush, starlings and some odd birds I have not identified. Oh, native birds feed here as well. The smaller birds only come down to eat when the chickens are feeding as they have learnt that the hens will give alarms about predators. If I am late feeding, the tree is just about jumping off the ground with all the chirping. That same tree has bumble bees in it at the moment. So… it’s a good thing to keep chickens to save wild birds.
@@tsunamis82 i guess you're right lol. thanks for doing your part. it's amazing that you're dedicating yourself to them (:
@@nitharshnirajagopal4575 that a huge number and most if not all, live miserable lives. My ones are kept here until they die naturally. I don’t eat them. Currently I have three older birds and six 7 months old. These are the egg layers.
That's a really good comparison.
@@nitharshnirajagopal4575 what happens when you need to increase monoculture production by 100x then because everyone is eating only vegetables lmao yeah no, eating only plant based is not the way to go stop spreading your nonsense it’s not sustainable like you guys always claim it is. You haven’t seen what happens if 7 billion people eat only carrots and celery. Plus the deficiencies 99% of people would have
I'm really glad you guys made this. I've been studying bees and wasps independently for some time and I think it's important that people know that honeybees are invasive. In October, when I heard the American Bumblebee disappeared from 8+ states, that's what I cared about most. Bumblebee keeping is actually becoming a valid form of beekeeping, despite not being profitable and I really like that.
Wasps kill bees
Same here. I've been studying insects in general for over 25 years, also independently. I have seen this thing time and time again. It's always, "save the honeybee", or, "save the monarchs", or something like that. It trains people to only culture their properties for a tiny set insects of the many thousands of insects that are real movers and shakers in the world. I just wish the myopia would stop. Insects have so much diversity and beauty and character and we are killing them all off.
You know what, I always liked the bumblebee better anyways… those dudes are much cuter and much thiccer
@@GuineaPigEveryday from my experience they're also signficantly less of assholes than honeybees are
Did you know the American Bumble bees are a more effective pollinator than the honey bee.
I was at an agricultural conference a few years ago where a guy was talking about how we didn't need to worry about saving the bees since honey bees are doing better than ever. During the Q&A I asked him about native and wild bees and he admitted to not knowing about them. I think more farmers need resources outside of the pesticide companies that have basically taken over. It was pretty clear no one there had realized that the problem went beyond cultivated species.
@James Evans Come on man, don't bring politics into this.
@Armament Armed Arm No, you misunderstand me. As in, governmental politics. Especially the American kind where everyone gets worked up about it. I hate that shit because 1, I have no interest in it because I see it pointless, and 2, I am not American.
Ya I didn’t know this info - first time I heard this. I’m not an expert, but all I heard about was save the bees and colony collapse.
This video was very educational.
My favorite bee is probably the bumble bee btw.
@@Auganemanon Then why are you pressed?
@@Auganemanon the reason why politics are talked about is because that’s where many of these problems come from no matter what country city or continent u live in a majority of problems in your country has to do with your politics specifically ur local politics.
Planting “bee friendly” plants in my yard has given myriad species of pollinators a new place to forage. The variety of bees and wasps now visiting is astounding.
same
This is how you contribute. We do the same and don't use pesticide. After a couple of years the pollinator populations are way up where we live.
me too, native plant species to my region. And as upcycle mentions, never use any pesticides. One huge source in my yard for all types of wild bees and wasps is a foxgrape vine I finally let grow out after initially trying to get rid of it when I bought the house. Now every year I have about 20 feet of thick vines on the rails of my deck, and tons of bees and wasps feeding, and later the song birds (I'm a big birder) when it fruits. I've seen a myriad of species of bees and wasps. And zero stings! The 'bee shelter' made of stacks of bamboo is very popular in my yard for all the solitary bees and wasps, too. Also, paper wasp nests under my eaves and front porch are allowed to stay til the queen leaves in fall.
Same, I just have a balcony, but it's amazing how many different pollinators it can attract. For example, since last year, my balcony has been visited by 9 different bumblebee species so far!
Many spices like thyme, rosemary, oregano, marjoram, satureja, sage are amazing to have. They’re awesome to cook with but all different kinds of pollinators love them. Take a look at a flowering thyme. Literally hundreds of bees can be on one plant at a time. It’s amazing to watch.
I always thought: What difference does my tiny garden make? Then I put up one of those bee hotels, and wild bees started to come to our garden. We added more bee hotels, left "wild corners" in the garden, put in a tiny pond and started planting insect friendly plants (native to our region) and now we have loads of different species. There is a noticeable difference. This year we had a small hornets nest. I'm terribly scared of wasps and was scared when I saw the hornets but they totally left us in peace. But we didn't have a wasp problem this year because the hornets scare them off. :-D Also, I learned a bit about wasps and saw we had a lot of solitary ones that are not as aggressive as the standard variety that forms hives. I left out small dishes with water for insects to drink from in hot summers and they were visited by a large number of solitary wasps. Scared the hell out of me at first but now I got to know them better and they are not aggressive and will leave you alone. It's basically only two varieties of wasps here in the region that will pester you. And they are indiscriminate when it comes to food sources. They will eat human food and become aggressive and annoying. I'm no expert but I have the feeling that those varieties will thrive because they are more versatile and the wild ones will decline. A bit like birds in big cities where only sparrows and pidgeons stand a chance up to the point where they become pests.
It is absolutely worthwhile to make your garden a wildlife habitat. There is so much to see in our garden now. We have a wide variety of birds coming to bathe in our pond, we have lots of different butterflies, bees, bumble bees, hover flies, even dragonflies. We have small bats, beetles, etc.
And the ground is full of earthworms here, which is a good sign as far as I know. I absolutely love my wild garden and the wild bee population increases with every year. We had to put up a new bee hotel this year. :-D
That sounds lovely! I hope that you continue to document the flora and the visitors you receive - people often underestimate the value of having that data, as well as their own impact on the environment around them. Thank you for making yours a positive one!
Dang, now I want to visit your garden😂. Jokes apart, massively good job. Hope your garden grows better:)
I agree! I live in Florida which have over 300 of solitary bees! I have learned that you can go to construction sites and pick up discarded wood and find people who grow bamboo (the fast growing thin kid) that they cut back and throw away all the time. Combine these two and you can make your own bee hotels for free and make them for others as well, just cost a little of time to make!
Amazing!
My parents have a lovely little garden in the front yard and damn near a forest on the back, every summer for the past 15 years we are visited by a whole host of bees and insects :)
This is such important information. It saddens me that the majority of people don’t know about this, and are only focused on the honey bees. As a person who loves zoology, biology and animals in general, the extinction/endangerment of these species and many more breaks my heart. I hope we’ll take the necessary steps in saving these precious animals.
Why would the majority of ppl know this? That's like saying it's sad the majority of ppl don't know flaming bend their legs at the ankle no the knee or it's sad ppl don't know octopuses can taste with their arms or owls don't have eyeballs. Most ppl aren't going to know that because most ppl aren't keeping bee's, or interacting with insets. It's sad specialists don't know, but it's not sad most people don't know.
well, when a bee comes to my garden how am I supposed to tell if it's a honey bee or regular bee when they all look the same? at least in my country, I won't stop any from feeding, I've got enough plants that they can't even get to all of them,
@@trevnti So these people that "don't know" choose to believe the lies instead... it's the convenient truth.
Cape honey bees only reproduce asexually invasive species/parasites
@@trevnti He finds it sad that the majority of people don't know about the big issue we're all facing world wide of many species declining world wide due to human actions such as putting pesticides on everything, because if more people knew, we could actually collectively contribute and make sure the ecosystem recovers and becomes more diverse again. Our declining eco system will bring huge problems to everyone and every species... Your argument about it being the same as saying most people also don't know octopuses can taste with their arms doesn't make sense as there's a difference. The majority of people don't need to know octopuses can taste with their arms, but the majority of people should know (or atleast the farmers and people who do things that hurt other species without their own awareness) that they are causing an issue they won't be able to fix if they continue doing whatever it is that hurts them. The information's value is greater than your octopus fact for example, it doesn't threaten the octopuses that humans don't know they can taste with their arms the same way it creates issues for the whole ecosystem because a ton of people don't know they're messing up the natural balance if you get what I'm grasping at?
Thank you! People were making a big deal about honey bees, but don't care at all for native pollinators.
I am most concerned with endemic species surviving.
Ish
Speak up then! Why weren't scientists saying something?
@@OneAdam12Adam They're too busy trying to scare people with politics to care about real science. There's no money for them in fixing real problems. The people who write the paychecks for *all* forms of modern research always have an agenda. The truth and consequences are nothing but a hindrance to power.
Awesome video. At my company Avallen Spirits we do everything we can to support wild bees who pollinate the apples we use in our product and educate people about the wonders of bumblebees, leaf cutter bees, Mason bees, miner bees, scissor bees and more. They are so beautiful and do important for all life on earth
@@shortshorts695 I wish you and your business the best. 👍 Kudos.
I am so glad I'm seeing this, many people don't realise that honeybees aren't the only bees and aren't the only pollinators
I knew honeybees weren’t the only pollinators, but not more than a few others lol. I thought they were the king of pollinators tho
One time I had a friend that thought bumblebees was a cute nickname for honeybees...
FR I've been saying that for so long I'm happy these guys made this video. In our garden we deliberately grow flowers that only benefit wild bees
@@heartz.349 This is why we can't have nice things
They're the only pollinators that make honey though. And they are more efficient at pollinating than most other bugs too, especially since a lot of those other bugs are actually harmful, i.e. mosquitoes.
I love the bumblebees. They’re so cute and fuzzy. I once was able to pet one because it fell asleep in a flower.
That is so adorable
They're really mellow bees!
I love them too
That’s so cute~ I’m a bit scared of bees but I’d love to pet a bumblebee one day
Not so cute if a bee stings on your balls while you’re asleep like what happened to me
I’m glad I found this video! I took a biology class back in college taught by an extremely knowledgeable archaeologist. He was the first to tell me people are worried about the wrong bees. This was around 8-ish years ago, and I’ve been trying to warn people since, but I’m not very good at communicating the problem. Now I have something I can link them to so they can better understand what I’m talking about. Thank you for all your hard work and research!
I’ve been co existing with a bumble bee hive under my porch. I even save the ones that get stuck inside my porch. They’ve NEVER EVER stung me once. It’s insane. Theyll be buzzing around my front door, and if I just walk in they don’t bother me, and I don’t bother them. Crazy how docile they can be if you are too!
@IN REGENERATIONE thank you 😂😂😂😂 I was roasted one too many times. Decided to make myself roast proof.
I was "lit up" by a hive of Bumblebees when I was young. Dunno why they jumped me, but it was a terrifying experience.
There used to be a tree in my Highschool that would attract bumble bees right next to our classroom. I agree, they’re harmless fluffy bugs that‘ll sometimes buzz up to our windows to say hi. It’s the hornets we‘d have to look out for
@@fischcakes7207 no hornets are very peaceful. it's the vespulas that are a threat
@@LibraryofAcousticMagic3240 Fair enough, luckily we'd rarely ever get wasps and they'd stay far away if we ever did. The only reason hornets were a problem to us is that they'd go in and around the classroom and disrupt the class since most were scared of them (including the teachers.)
This is information that needs desperately needs traction..........
@@DemeDemetre Is that how pathetic your life is? You go around trolling, making pathetic little remarks? Stay in Georgia where you belong.
@@billb.2673 Wooden Shoe?
@@DemeDemetre tf
@@billb.2673 Im not in Georgia
We need to give power and say back to the people
I have a relatively small garden, a good portion of it is patio. The part that is patio has all kinds of flowers in planters on it and the rest is covered in salad and veg.
I've noticed that I get about 10 different types of bees in the garden, rarely see a honey bee, they all seem to have their own favorite flower. This video has explained why.
Same for me! I see tons of wasps, wild bees and bumble bees but rarely a honey bee in comparison. Despite having a bee keeper in my neighbourhood
my rooftop garden only have a really tiny bees, same or less size with a mosquitos..
If you’re interested in bees consider reading “Buzz- The Nature and Necessity of Bees” by Thor Hanson! It goes into more detail about why certain bees only visit certain flowers ect! It is a really well written book that I’ve really enjoyed and learnt a whole lot from!
sadly my entire backyard is only filled with honey bees
I used to be afraid of bees and wasps.
Now I consider myself luck to have so many bee and wasp visitors to my little green oasis in the city.
My mind boggles and my heart warms that I have gotten to meet the littlest of the bees, the biggest bumbles and a mutlitude of surprisingly reasonable wasps.
as a bee keeper Ive said this to anyone who would listen to me, its scary how much we are loosing and everyone is trying to fix the wrong problem
Would you suggest some type of hive to help wild bees, like small boxes in trees, I intend a flower garden to support them
@@benjaminp6924 they are called wild for some good reasons so i think it is impossible to give them a nest and a man made one
@@dikahadipriyanto1418 agreed but many hives are in walls of houses or in barns so it shouldn't be to hard to figure something they could use
Thank you for spreading the word as an actual keeper! Keep up your work sir we’ll learn about the chain reaction caused by extinction soon enough
@Madlum Sibul nothing I wrote implied that I wanted to domesticate anything wild or to use for production of anything, how come we can eat so we'll using wild buffalo, elk, deer, n a on , politicians are the problem and all whom vote for them money lovers
Simply put, biodiversity and bee hotels. After moving towns, I'm finally in a spot where I see wild bees visiting mine. I'm glad there's growing awareness!
Just don't assumed no gender and we r cool
@@adamwhite202 what?
@Adam White I think you commented on the wrong place
Becareful, there is a chance that the bee hotel that You put, Will hace a negative effect
I was so grossly misinformed regarding the bee problem; thank you so much for this!
There is no bee problem
@@rusty1491 there is no war in ba sing se 😵
@@brucewayne3034 I love that reference. SOO fitting!
🎉😂 japan's apple grow at snow land which human hardly to live. If you want to see than go to noal farm. I hope wild bee can be there😂🎉.
@@rusty1491nothing happened in tiananmen square 😜
my parents started a pollinator garden at their old house. almost the entire side yard was taken up by it, and the people they sold it to loved it, so hopefully they will continue it.
I planted wildflowers and grass in my yard. I only cut pathways to walk around.
All of the wildlife enjoyed it.
I used to have wood-boring bees at an old house. They didn’t ever bore into the house, but they did bore into the pieces of driftwood my dad would bring home and use to carve or support plants. I loved those bees.
Yup l remember seeing them at our grandma's house roof
Yes, so to say, those are carpenter bees, there are mason bees inhabit as you would guess bricks & concrete, soil, arboreal, ... As you inform there are ways to harmonize!
We had carpenter bees but they almost killed a maple tree we had in our front yard
@@doodad77 carpenter bees and mason bees are extremely docile and calm. they’re so sweet
@@dumpsterfire3214 Carpenter bees look so scary being big fast moving shiny black bullets but yeah they are actually super chill. I like the leaf-cutter and sweat bees
Super glad that I didn't intrude on a couple of solitary leafcutter bees that were nesting in old screw holes in the wall at my home. I realised they have a really docile nature after I researched them and got to know them. They sealed the nests over now with chewed leaves ready for next years offspring to emerge.
It's possible to build nesting holes for many of these other bee species. Some people just drill various diameter and depth holes into blocks of wood, or the tops of wood posts. As long as it's untreated raw wood, it should be good for them to use.
@@jokerace8227, Yeah, I've seen something similar. I ordered a bee hotel today. It's basically a wooden box with removable pieces of bamboo inside that I intend to put in the yard.
I read that, after the larvae turn into cocoons, they become dormant and hibernate through the winter. I'm just a little unsure of the metamorphosis period while it's still summertime; I'm wondering if it's likely that they'll emerge late summer?
Leave nature alone we're not as smart as we think
@@zondaharrison5306 if we left nature alone many bees would go extinct
@@tadpole9264 Because we caused them to go exinct. I agree we now have to step up and try and fix the issues, but we can't lose sight that we created those same issues (lobbyists for the agriculture, dairy, and meat industries, as well as the politicians that are in the pockets are hugely to blame).
When I lived in a house I had solitary Mason Bees set up nests in old drill holes where the sun warmed the bricks. Everyone told me to spray, I just left them, even planted some bee friendly native plants. It was fascinating to watch them, never bothered anyone.
One apartment I lived in for 8 years there was a bees nest on the roof somewhere. I didn't have many window screens so Bees would occasionally fly in\out My apartment for up to an hour, then leave, though I have a mild fear of bees I didn't mind if it was a couple to a few inside, (I had alot of house plants).
When it would be too many bees, I would have to work on getting them outside or unfortunately kill them if I had trouble getting them to leave.
@@MemoGrafix I try not to to kill anything that gets in the house but I do have screens. I'll just take a small, clear plastic container and put it over whatever got in. Then I slide a piece of cardboard underneath, take the whole thing outside and release. Even yellow jackets and they scare the heck out of me!
I don’t know how you do it, bees are terrifying to me
@@EmJ.806 for me its wasp if you leave bees alone there loeave you alone
@@juliustime7809 I have friendly wasps living on my balcony. Since I planted bee friendly flowers on my balcony, there's always at least three wasps sitting on the flowers. This is a really nice kind... if they have the choice between you, your food and a flower they will always choose the flower.
I never put up honeybee hives but I do put up solitary bee houses and mine are always full. When I go out to my squash in the morning there are 2-3 bees on every flower and needless to say I’ve got tons of squash as a result. People need to learn this information asap!
Remove the "mandatory" lawns from ALL home-owner associations as one way to support the wild bees.
Make mandatory to grow wild local flower species plus food crops
Imagine putting up with HOA cancer.
@@jesuschristislord77733 they are truly a nightmare, I've only tangentially dealt with. some people are very misguide and drunk on every little scrap of power.
@@HisameArtwork some people enjoy paying hundreds of dollars per month for the "privilege" of not having any freedom of choice.
@@KateeAngel food crops are very hard to grow without having bug issues... One reason why crop growing is such a hazard to all things nature.
YES. My family’s business is bee keeping and we have been saying this for years! Save native pollinators- not just honey bees!
keep at it, because i've never heard about this, we need to understand nature more before we destroy it all
So do u have hives of wild bees
@@redtop27most wild bees don’t have hives. Some bumblebees do but that’s about it.
Being a bee keeper and telling people to save native bees is like being a chainsmoker telling people to not smoke... it's good advice, but a little hypocritical, isn't it. Your little family business is contributing to the problem. Unless you only keep native bees, in which case, disregard the remark.
Thanks for sharing this valuable information. Here in Japan we are observing the same problem: every year we’re observing less pollinators and the use of pesticides is excessive. It would be great to add captions in many languages to reach more people around the globe.
can we conclude that this problem was caused by the use of pesticides in the first place?
@@okyoky405 I think pesticides play a huge role (contributing to the growth of super-weeds and super-pests, resistant to the pesticides and herbicides we use, requiring higher doses to kill them the following year), but monocultures literally remove the source of food for wild native insects. We have monocultures of corn to feed our meat animals, which need increasing amounts of food and water as the rest of the world catches up to North America and Europe, which means we need even more feed crops to feed those animals (look into why the Amazon rain forest is being cleared: to make room for feed crops). On a smaller scale, cleaning up gardens in the fall and spring to cut back perennials and grasses also destroys potential habitat for our wild native insects, and I can't count how many customers I've had asking for herbicide to kill "weeds" like daisys, clover and dandilions in their lawns (I work in a plant nursery) because they want "perfect", completely sterile lawns.
if u use youtube desktop, u can choose 日本語
@@okyoky405 Pesticides, mites all sorts of different reasoning for the decline of bees. Of course pesticides weaken the bees which makes them more susceptible to these pests.
@@okyoky405 pesticides and weeding the garden are main reason in my opinion. Those overly manicured lawn dont even look good anyway.
I have spent the last few years trying to convince anybody who will listen. I noticed the wild bees were out pollinating our home orchard long before we ever saw honey bees. I planted food crops for the wild bees and severely limited pesticide use. As a result, we now have a healthy ecosystem of bees, wasps, flies, and beetles. Bees are not the only pollinators.
My fav 3 are: Megachile perihirta, Sphex ichneumoneus, and Agapostemon virescens. I live in PNW.
0:48 Those are calendula flowers, and wild bees love them. They love most members of the family Asteraceae. It includes calendula, aster, cosmos, daisy, marigold, sunflower, and many others. They also love crocus, willow, pussywillow, cane berries, sedum succulents, open-faced dahlias, lavender, mint, lemon balm, catnip, sage, rosemary, foxglove, mint, thyme, basil, weigela, laurel, privet, bee balm, cactus, and dandelion. For most wild bees, the pollen is more important than the nectar because they do not produce honey or comb. The trick is to plant a variety, so that there is always a useful plant in bloom.
Wild bees and other pollinating insects deserve conservation on a global scale, they help us make our food for crying out loud!
When it comes to saving the planet or making more money... the choice should be obvious, but unfortunately both parties think so.
Except their ideas to save them require reducing food production, that's completely counter-productive.
@@13bunnylove13 Your post is nothing but platitudes. Bees won't save the planet, and this video's ideas to save wild bees require cutting back on food production to the point of where half the world's population would starve to death.
@@Malamockq no It would require higher efficiency
@@FerretyZebra No, actually it would require the opposite. Industrial farming and monoculture are far more efficient than local small farms and polyculture.
The apple tree bee is also way fluffier than the honeybee. Save our fluffy bees from extinction. Also save non fluffy bees too. You might attract some butterflies and pretty moths in the process if you're planting flowers for them to sip on.
It's almost like nature's telling us that monoculture isn't the way to go
Is there anything in nature that is a monoculture? Even with ground elder, which spreads rapidly underground, there's room for other plants (morning glory for example), and eventually shrub and tree seeds are planted by squirrels or dropped in bird droppings, which can help smother the other plants and allow others to grow in their place. Humans certainly know how to make a mess of things.
@@tefroqr3994 no, probably because anything that does do that would get wiped out.
Anything mono is livestock
@@VinnyUnion and now are we, people who don't live symbiotically with nature too, livestock? If so, who's the farmer?
@@hypernation8298 i wonder
I have an isolated field of spontaneous wild flowers up at 1200m. Several years ago I filmed the flowers from ground level. I was stunned by the variety and wealth of insects. Not a single industrial bee to be seen. Then a couple of years ago a neighbour brought in half a dozen industrial hives a mile or so away. For the last two years you can only now see industrial honey bees, hundreds of them. I started looking for information about this and this is sadly one of the very few videos on this topic to be found. A very informative and important video.
We have bee plant and there are sooo many bees in my backyard, I like bumblebees the most. Since there just so fluffy and they are very friendly you can even touch one if you're careful enough. normally around this time of year there are a lot of yellow jackets in our garden, but now it's just these beautiful bees.
bumble bees are wonderful! they pollinate even more flowers in one day than a honeybee, they are very hard workers.
@@escapetherace1943 yes they are, I had the biggest crop of raspberries this year thanks to bumblebees. Beeing at eye level, I notice them more.
By leaving some short tree snags, some stacks of old firewood, down trees, some straw bales on our properties one creates habitat for the myriad of pollinators. Does not take much effort. The pursuit of "tidiness" can eliminate habitat.
@@killdizzle So what? Compared to the possible breakdown of our food supply, snakes and rats in your backyard are merely an inconvenience. Go get yourself some cats and be done with it. Sorry If you live in Australia or some other crazy place
@@layla8830 Cats are great to have outside if you want to kill your local native birds. Seriously, they are the number one threat to local birds, and the main reason bird populations are dropping like mad. Build habitat for insects and birds, leave your garden looking a mess in winter and leave spring cleanup until later (eg. don't cut back perennials), and learn about local rodents and snakes and wildlife to decrease your (mostly) irrational fears of them (they'll attack when threatened, many aren't even active during the day). It's their world we're destroying.
@@tefroqr3994 When did I say I was afraid of rodents and snakes? My garden looks like what you described. I was merely presenting an easy solution for someone who does seem like they have a dislike for these animals.
For about five years we let most of the lawn in our garden grow wild instead of mowing it. By now there are so many different wildflowers in addition to our veggies and fruits and they all attract different types of bees. This year we had two couples of black carpenter bees. I didn't even know those excited.
You can notice in the quality of fruits and vegetables. As a kid I remember fruits and vegetables being bigger ,tastier and more colorful.
This should be everywhere! We should be learning about what bees, wasps and hornets are native to our areas of the world and how we can protect them. Happy planting everyone! 🌱
I dont really want to save wasps or hornets… but fine.
@@dookie7299 Same lol
@@dookie7299 You're really ignorant if you still hate them.
Nope, wasps and hornets die every time I see them. No exceptions.
@@alexandruandreivasile5041 and I am supposed to believe what a random person on youtube has to say?
Wow this was very informative. I had the complete wrong picture in my head. Thank you for this, I am planning on starting my own little garden in my yard so I will now be sure to use native species of plants and logs with holes in them. Again, incredible video ❤️
Thank you very much! Good luck with your project.
Your pfp lmao
Yes, informative indeed. I for one am baffled by how these mainstream terds will accept depictions of ancient Egyptians working with bees as empirical evidence that Egypt did in fact have bee keepers, but when there is a clear depicition of a UFO, or clear depictions of NONE human entities in Egypt, these mainstream dingle berries jump to "ITS-JUST-A-MYTH MODE." Sorry, off topic, but worth mentioning... *Forces self to continue worthless upload, only to dislike at the end and have gained absolutely zero knowledge*
@@kundermill2892 Did you forget to take your meditation?
@@kundermill2892 bruh, I get the reasoning you are using but there is a big flaw. Humans tell stories. Both true and made up. The artistic depictions made by ancient Egyptians are telling their stories. Some of everyday life and others of their mythology.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
Thank you! Most people don't know about bachelor bees, they made up something like 98% of North American bees. They typically live underground so any time we till the soil, they all lose their homes. When we cut our grass, we suck them up.
I've never understood the fascination with the honey bees while ignoring the bachelor bees. Bachelors are native, the honey bees aren't.
Bachelors also tend to sting less because they aren't defending a queen and colony.
I tried ‘bachelor bees’ in google and got nothing. What kind of bee are you talking about?
I tried ‘bachelor bees’ in google and got nothing. What kind of bee are you talking about?
I tried ‘bachelor bees’ in google and got nothing. What kind of bee are you talking about?
I tried ‘bachelor bees’ in google and got nothing. What kind of bee are you talking about?
I tried ‘bachelor bees’ in google and got nothing. What kind of bee are you talking about?
This video educated me so much. It just further emphasizes how critical native plant species are for our environment. I can’t wait to learn more from you guys!
My neighbors give me a hard time about my yard because its not all trimmed and neat but i get so many bugs and birds in my yard. An old unused shed in the back is home to many large bumble bees and the number of fireflys is amazing
I have babyboomers in my neighbourhood who still use Round Up pesticide. I let my garden grow as wild as I can. But they even mowe part of my garden when I am not home.
@@ramonwiltsmy neighbors hate my yard but i have the coolest insects! Praying mantis, huge garden spiders, giant southern stag beetles and even some rino beetles! Theyre just mad our yards dont look like their cookie cutter, home and garden, HGTV nonsense😂
@@whome9470 It truly is sad, but we are on the right side of history. And we have happy little animals around us. Take care! ✌🧡🇳🇱
@@ramonwilts this obsession with the front yard lawn is ridiculuos.
Put a sign in the middle: Bee Paradise. It may annoy them even further, but maybe start the thinking process. You are doing your citizens duty of preserving natural wild life.
Interesting fact that people often overlook is how great Flies are for pollination, even in this video some of the footage was infact of Bee mimicking Hoverflies. Many species of Fly will be active at lower temperatures than Bees, extending pollination time throughout the day/into cold seasons. In fact, within the colder regions on Earth where Bees have a hard time surviving, Flies are the dominant pollinators.
Sssshhhh, that's how you get censored. Only DW can be the source for the facts it deems worthy.
Wasps as well. A lot of people wrongly assume wasps have no ecological value because they don’t pollinate, when wasps are key pollinators (with many being species-specific pollinators), and the more generalized wasps are also key predators in ecosystems.
Incidentally, the most terrifying wasp of all-the Asian giant hornet-plays a key role in defending native pollinator populations in East Asia (especially the Asiatic honeybee, a non-domesticated honeybee species native to Asia and occasionally farmed for honey as well). Asian giant hornets will tackle most insects as prey, but one behaviour that differs from other colonial wasps is preying on entire colonies of other eusocial insects, including both Asiatic and European honeybees. Asiatic honeybees are adapted for dealing with these massed attacks (up to 30+ hornets systematically butchering every bee they come across and taking every adult bee, larvae, and pupae to feed to their own young), while European honeybees are only capable of fending off hornets that pick off one bee at a time (due to having evolved in Europe, where none of the hornets launch massed attacks targeting entire colonies of bees). Thus, the existence of Asian giant hornets puts the native Asiatic honeybee (and other native pollinators) at an advantage over the nonnative European honeybee.
There's no evidence that flies are more efficient pollinators than honey bees. Flies also carry dangerous germs that can contaminate food for humans.
Everyday I’m finding out every creature on this earth has a purpose except humans and mosquitos.
@@S.F157 That's nonsense. No creature has a purpose on Earth. Bees included.
Thank you for spreading this word! I can't tell you how many times I've been attacked when I've posted actual data about the number of honeybee hives, trying to answer people who in all innocence have believed that they were catastrophically decreasing. With over 2 million views, this video has done infinitely more to educate people than any of us could ever do ourselves!
When you said you've been attacked, I thought it was by bees 😅🐝🐝🐝
@@IRosamelia Because young people nowadays are not used to read more than three lines of text.
@@DerSaa Der Saa, you're extremely rude implying I'm not used to reading/lazy, when in fact, it's more than likely I've read more than you in our lives. That's Dr. Rosa for you.
Same here. Many "beekeepers" do not like it when you tell them this, particularly the larger ones who are making good profits. They want to greenwash and say how they are saving the planet when actually they are doing more harm than good by selling backyard beehives, bees, equipment, paid beekeeper classes, etc. It's an entire industry that they are making money from at the expense of native bees. I have started to copy and paste this video and put it in the comments on all the honeybee/beekeeping ads I get on facebook (which is a lot), lol. I figure the more people that know this the better. Some of them even block me because they don't want their unwitting clients who are buying bees and trying to do backyard beehives to know the truth and harm their business model by seeing this video or other articles I post. Oh well, lol. We should focus on removing our useless lawn and replacing with native pollinators to provide habitat and food sources, rather than adding more backyard hives.
@@IRosamelia so humble for a dr😂😂😂😂
THANK YOU! I have been telling people this for years, my husband is a beekeeper and he has a bee removal company. Honey bees are rampant here, and they are aggressive. They also out compete our natural insects heavily. It’s so sad but everyone is so stuck on misinformation that they won’t listen even when we try to educate them.
Nice, I'm proud of having a black Mayan honeycomb in my backyard all we did was to put flowers from this region and they proliferate like crazy
At our old place in California we got carpenter bees galar. These big black bees that loved to pollinate our flowers we put down along with the wild peas that grew.
One point I wish you would make at the end of the video is about cleaning the bee houses. A lot of people don't know that the little bumble bee or carpenter bee houses with the drilled wood or bamboo needs to be cleaned once a year to avoid pests and diseases from flourishing thus harming the bees you want to save. Also a lot of bees nest in the ground and as a result mass grading development, insensitive lawn care, and pesticides harm those bees alongside cicadas and lightning bugs.
Good point
Yes, so important! What many people also don’t know about those bee houses: if holes are drilled with the grain into a spruce log it’s of NO use for the bees. It MUST be hard wood with holes drilled perpendicular to the grain, otherwise the holes are too rough and hurt the bee‘s wings and moisture can enter much more easily, causing mold on the brood.
True of bird feeders also.
This summer I decided to use my empty backyard for good and start planting some flowers, and it's been amazing to see how many bumble bees show up :)
Great! :)
👎👎👎👎👎👎👎
@@hamzabakri5021 o M g U r S o R u D e A n D m E a N (que angry comment thread)
Farmers: Use a fuck ton of pesticides
Also farmers: WHY ARENT OUR CROPS GROWING
I'm from Chile. I remember being a child, playing hide and seek in my grandma's farm and found orange bumblebees (Bombus dahlbomii, one of the biggest bumblebee in the world), at first I was scared AF, that thing is huge. But then I realized they were harmless, even friendly (at least that's what 10y/o me thought).
Few months after, a colony of yellow jacket settled in, I never saw the orange bees again.
It's been ten years I guess, and I have not seen a Bombus dahlbomii since, I've been through multiple national parks in my country, multiple farms, different places.
Not a single one. My friend which is a few years older than me saw ONE last year, she was so happy. The Bombus dahlbomii is in extinction risk due to the introduction of the European bumblebee, which is sad, different organizations had asked the government to stop the importation of honey bees and they don't listen.
Oh no! I've seen one of those on the mountain. Just one, just once. It was HUGE! And yes, they certainly ARE 'friendly', lol! It wouldn't leave me alone. But I didn't know what it was or how endangered it was. I'm sad to hear it used to be such a common sight in Japan :(
I've always loved bumblebees. I take care of all the ones I can, at least. Making sure there are plats with flowers in colors that are easy for them to see and feeding them when they're sluggish or dying, and stuff. They're my little friends.
If it wasn't for the honey bee, farmers wouldn't have realized that their pesticides were killing insects they desire.
Except all those lawsuits that are continuing to happen throughout the world against the pesticide companies for causing cancer in humans. Yes bees are important but humans are more important. If you save the humans - you'll save the bees
@@faithreturns333 noone is "more important".. And before you jump out of your good skin, let me explain, lol.
We all depend on eachother.. wild plants, animals, birds, insects, etc.. it is all an intricate system, and symbiosis.
That said, I would kill any bee to save my children:P I hope you see my point? We need tostop focusing on just one part of thewhole( humans), and start looking at how it all fits together.. lots to fix, and a lot we need to stop using.. like plastic,
@@Goldenhawk583 in Arizona I dealt with killer bees. These are manufactured bees. I noticed that this documentary didn't even approach the subject. Have you ever had a swarm of killer bees in your backyard? I have and the insect specialist in Tempe Arizona was an absolute Freak Show but he knew a lot about bees! Technically we need bees but artificial pollination has been used for centuries. It just takes more work on the part of the humans. I agree that pollution is an absolute problem and yes humans are a problem with pollution. The main problem is humanity is out of balance with its creator and the creation. We stopped teaching the Bible which is the world history and Mankind. That's why you see atheistic idiots creating Alchemy Pharmaceuticals which is out of balance with nature and Nature's God. If we would get back into balance with our very Creator then things would be better
@@faithreturns333 The bible has no place in my life as any teaching one should obey.
Sure, it has a few good points, but the massmurder, and 99% threats of deaths makes it a horrible book.
I am 100% sure, that plenty of these crooks, that kill and poppute and lie.. all swear they are christians.
Please.. the first part of your comment makes a lot of sense.. but then jumping to the bible.. with all its genocidal murders, the use human sacrifice, tha total lack of scientific understanding ( hares do NOT chew cud).
Child abuse and total lack of respect for anything female ( fathers can sell their daughters as sex slaves?)
lets stop here.
@@Goldenhawk583 Without the bible you wouldn’t exist, silly atheist.
How about a quick follow-up video detailing more things people can do to help 🐝🌺
This was only briefly covered at 7:32
Great video and glad to see there have been so many views!!
....I never actually considered wild bees, and didn't know honeybees were such a threat. I will definitely pass this along, and see what I can do to support them more. Thank you!
honeybees aren't a huge threat, it's the pesticides which made farmers dependent on using more and more honeybees....
just an average home gardener/farmer having several hives isn't a problem, nor do they take too much nectar
Yeah... They're not a threat. Healthy bee colonies, in general are not spreading illness. I don't disagree with saving wild bees, but show me one bee keeper with colonies of anything other than honey bees.
So I started to cut the grass today and the clover flowers were loaded with honey bees so I left it.
Bill Wilson, every action counts - even small ones. 🌱🐝
Bill - you are a poet. All of us who believe similarly - poets
@A M I cut grass with my teeth
@@user-jc2in3cp3g I cut grass with my butt
When one type of flower fades away, another comes on. The bee's food. That's why dandilions are so important.
Thank you so much for making this!❤️❤️ I’m a botanist that grows native flowers for native pollinators. And the over use of honey bees is leading to so many problems
There is a TH-cam channel here in Brasil that not just only encourages the protection of native bees by planting specific plants, but also teaches the cultivation of hives of native species and explains how ordinary people in cities and neighborhoods can create and extract honey with no problem as native bees here don't have stings. The channel is called "Abelhando Mundo Afora".
2 weeks ago when I was looking for the plants in my garden I saw a huge black bumblebee-kind of Bee. I didn't knew what it was but in this video their was a brief shot of it so I Googled it. Turned out it was a blue wood bee. I didn't knew about the Different wild bees and now I am fascinated ☺️ (greetings from Germany)
At my grandparents house in Idaho, they have some bumble bees that are absolutely humongous, almost a full inch and a half long. So far they’ve held strong for the past 10 years, and hopefully it stays that way.
I have MONSTER bumbles at my place. We're down in Utah, so probably the same species as what you're seeing at your grandparent's house. They're almost totally black, and terrifying, but don't really bother anyone.
@@SilverFlame819 i think that would be carpenter bee and not bumble. They look alike yet carpenter bee is bigger and with black ‘body' and much louder when flying. First year i am doing gardening and it is amazing how many new knowledge I’ve gained. Truly a blessing.
I spotted a blue carpenter bee last year in a dead tree in my garden. This year I have two of the same species nesting in the tree. They look like huge black and blue bumblebees and are pretty cute. I also once spotted 4 sleeping bees in a flower and googled and could find out that sometimes very young bees sleep together in one flower, how fascinating!
😍😍😍
Good information. However, honey bees pollinate 80% of flowering plants. Including the plants you said they can't. Not saying they're more important than others but just as important. apples, melons, cranberries, pumpkins, squash, broccoli, and almonds, etc. are all pollinated by honey bees.
I've been thinking about this. It seems to be another "monoculture" that might displace diverse wildlife. But this is the first documentary ive ever heard of.
Thank you DW!
People helping out bees is really good, but it sounds like we need more systemic solutions. Maybe regulation and programs to fight these problems on an industrial level.
I'd rather people just start using native plant species and just care for their local environment. I hope in the next 10 years most lawn grass around the states dies off and is replaced by better crops. We don't need lawn grass all it does is just look green and nice trimmed cut. We need more environmentally sustainable yards.
@@deron2203 It does at least help prevent erosion.
You are correct, blaming honey bees for the problems that face all bee species is like blaming one species of dinosaur for the giant rock that is about to smash into their planet.
Absolutely. Imo aerosolized pesticides should be banned outright.
Wow! This is completely new to me. Thanks for the information and the quality of the content to make it attractive and engaging!
Thank you very much!
Would love an episode to learn more about wild bees on how we can help them thrive.
Scientists estimate that bees have been around for an estimated 130 million years, appearing, at least evolutionarily speaking, not so long after the first flowers bloomed. Once these two famous partners teamed up, they embarked on a shared journey of rapid speciation together resulting in the approximately 20,000 species of bees and astounding 400,000 species of flowering plants that have been identified so far. [WWF]
Speciation is the process by which new species form. 3:55
Today, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 50% higher than in 1750, far exceeding the natural changes over at least the past 800,000 years. [United Nations]
Speciation is how a new type of plant or animal species is created.
Speciation is an evolutionary process of the formation of new and distinct species. 2:17
I'll plant some native plants. Never like the idea of poison either...
Poisons come predominantly from plants 😉 I'm kidding (well, I mean it's true), but I know what you mean and agree.
We used to have lawns near our homes over the years and never used pesticides. They were never big and we always planted other plants to go along with them.
Thankfully my landlady let's her whole backyard go wild. So its full of hundreds if not thousands of pollinators every day. Many ppl wish to do this, but often city's have arbitrary by-laws about not cutting grass or letting a yard go.
Agreed, it's often in tenancy contracts too.
I have to keep the front in some semblance of order, but I tried letting my backyard go without mowing for a year. No kids or pets to worry about. It's surrounded by a high wood fence, so no nosey neighbors to rat me out to the city. I ended up with lots of wild flowers (and of course some not-so-great burrs). The grass got up to about chest-high in some parts, then died in the winter and added to the height (and apparently nutrients) of the soil. Everything came back even greener than before, with more wild grass than burrs this time. The sound of crickets at night is almost deafening. I'm hoping to see more lightning bugs this year too.
Wasp paradise
"Many ppl wish to do this, but often city's have arbitrary by-laws about not cutting grass or letting a yard go."
^this, 120%, currently living in a neighborhood where local zoning laws won't let us have our front & back yards go wild, so our next best thing that we could do was plant non-crop trees
The grass laws aren’t arbitrary. Long grass encourages mice, potentially venomous snakes, ticks, and mosquitoes which can become huge problem in human-dense spaces. Especially the latter two which can spread blood-born diseases.
Ultimately, for urban & suburban areas, a mix between a controlled lawn and wild garden are what’s best. It gives you a little space to not get chewed on while also giving the local fauna their own space as well as opposed to letting it all go wild.
we have a plant that attracts mostly carpenter bees. i always love to watch them because they’re so loud yet so delicate with their work
Thanks so much. Used this in my class, inspired us so we're building wildbee "resources" now in our environment.
I'm doing my Bachelor thesis on a related topic, and this is exactly what most people get wrong. With the rise of commercial reared bumblebees, the problem is only expected to expand. Especially in South America, bombus terrestris ( the European bumblebee) is driving the native bumblebees to extinctions.
Melipoliniculture is rising here in Brazil and I hope that it helps keeping our bees alive.
Bombis species have notably been regarded as threatened or absent amid regions of Ohio, but maybe not aware to detect or chronological decline but maybe inhospitable habitat. That's an interesting comparison with your info regarding that Bumblebee but likely reveals fitfullness & fulfillment of an econiche beside issues with introduction & invasiveness with anthropogenic catalyst & boost? Misinfo doesn't help so beware of various industries influences even on research. Arthropods to various families such as the winged (I'll leave to you for the Phylogeny but you will know) are among indicators to me of the enviro spheres.
I hope you include a whole section about how Mainstream Media is the leading cause about WHY people get this wrong. They don't tell whole stories, they just make sound-clips for people to feel like know-it-alls once they've learned all 30 seconds of information told (buffered with 4 minutes 30 seconds of stock photos) and think that's all to the world.
I'VE GOT A GIANT EMPTY BACKYARD I'M GONNA ADD SO MANY PLANTS FOR THOSE WILD BUDDIES AND I'LL PUT OUT A LITTLE BUFFET OF SUGAR WATER FOR IF THEY'RE TIRED.
Are there any projects happening where I can donate to help research and protect the different bee species?
Just know, gardening is very hard
@@DVDRAR true, but it's very easy if you remove all your grass and just plant native flora and let it naturally invade the space and take over.
University of Florida (UF) Bee Biology Lab. They research both wild bees and honeybees; demonstrating negative effects of industrial farming on A. mellifera is as important to changing industry as proving that wild bees are more effective.
Your county agriculture extension may have a local wildflower seed mix available.
The sugar water dish can help spread disease, stick to native wild flowers and appropriate nesting spots, like a sunny, open surface of unwashed sand = sand with mud or pieces of hardwood with the holes (6-8 millimeters) drilled perpendicular to the grain (= not like the logs shown in this video; this is important so that the bee‘s wings don’t get damaged when laying eggs into the holes and it also reduces the number of cracks through which moisture could access the larvae and kill them)
Sugar water kills hummingbirds and is not good for bees.
Under my brutal totalitarian regime, bees of all species will be conserved.
All hail supreme leader 👏
Finally, somone I can agree with!
How about all species native to an area will be conserved
Where do I sign up for the salt mines?
@@avacadotoast5492 honey making b-
ee
We aren’t saving the wrong bees… all bees need to be saved. All bees have a role in nature.
I love bumblebees honestly, they're just so fuzzy and friendly. In my garden there's a nest or hive or something of bumblebees almost every year.
I grow tomatoes in my garden and also have a mint bush and there are just so many different species. I thought they were just flies doing mimicry, but after doing a bit of research I figured out they were wild bees. I only ever see honey bees in the beginning of June when there are dandelions growing.
We have tons of different types of "solitary bees" here in the Texas panhandle. I love to sit in my garden and watch the small bees do their job. They come in a vast array of colors and patterns. I do see some honey bees as well, but the solitary bees do the majority of the pollination in my garden.
I myself have noticed a variety of different species here in Georgia USA. There’s one bee that looks a lot like a honey bee but isn’t. It’s called a mason bee. They’re great pollinators, but you’ll see them a lot in mud pits. They almost never sting people. Pretty much harmless.
It's really sad to see insects and bugs number decreasing, I remember when I was a kid there would be tons of butterflies in my backyard, but now I rarely see a butterfly anywhere, I usually don't care about these stuff but when I was coming back home from school I saw a beautiful blue winged moth on the side of the road and it made me think about the beauty of nature I guess.
Tell people coffee beans won't grow, see how fast we change 😏
Why don't ban GMO? Problem solved in a second.
@@The_unexplained what's wrong with GMO and how it affects bees and other polinators?
@@begemotowa Gmo has nothing to do with insects. It is a wide used term for genetically modified crops. This modification could be various things but one of the popular one is pesticide resistant ones that release something called CRY that deter insects naturally. It is the same as using pesticide but much more healthy. So banning them doesnt really change anything since if we dont use it then we will use pesticides.
@@The_unexplained
"aOH NO the thing i dont even know the actual meaning of the word is dangerous
Source:trust me,facebook said"
your bananas,your tomatoes,Apples,chickens, and basically almost everything you ate in your life was gmo
gmo just means it was modified by humans
even these "non gmo"are gmo
Ah yes and what about vanilla ice cream everyone will be sticking their fingers into flowers just to try and make the stuff
I just bought bee food and a bee feeder today for the bees that live under my garage concrete for the last 3 years. I call it the "Oh Bee-have Diner". Haha
bzz
Just remember to clean it often so that diseases don’t spread there
@@johnjohn2388 they won't even use it. Bummer. Probably throw it out soon.
@@adamfrbs9259 The thought is appreciated. Any chance you can grow some plants they might like instead?
@@haruhirogrimgar6047 I could but I think that means flowers...I'm not much of a flower guy. I'm growing a Giant Sequoia in my yard though. 3 years and still growing. (It's the Midwest, so kinda a big deal)
Our city sprays for mosquitos every spring. This means other insects, like wild bees and butterflies get killed too. Since mosquitos are known to carry diseases, there is a give and take to the solution that means someone or something will inevitably suffer.
I have a tiny garden... I like it to be a bit on the wild side, ie. lots of 'weeds', herbs and wild flowers as well as 'standard' plants and small trees. I have all manner of pollinators that pop in to do their work, in the main I have no idea what they are... I am just chuffed they visit. I am sad at the urban wood fences and brick paving that have decimated the UK gardens over the past 20 years..... we can all do our bit. 'We have to get ourselves back to the garden'... lets do that soon eh! Thank you.
Thats the right mindset, as long as the weed isnt like the invasive japanese knotweed or something haha. Diversity is key.
@@yamyams94 No knotweed thank goodness...just weeds I can include in a salad 😁👍🏽🥳.
Properties should have wildlife friendly continuity.
@@billwilson3665 Actually it's just nice to see more people gardening and putting pots on top of their bricked/ concrete paving...as a result of the C thing. We have hope eh!😁👍🏽💐🌻☀️
I only grow weeds 😝
As a roofer. I see bees every day. Youd be surprised how many hives I see in people's bottom row of shingles, right at the gutters mostly. 4 out of 7 houses I'd say
Born in 85, I found my second wild bee nest ever this year. Finding it made me excited. It’s in a wooded area inside a hollow of a tree that isn’t very big. My first was when I was about 17. It was on an older tree much higher up very big. For about a foot wide there ran a strip from base to top we’re no bark grew. There high up bees had made home. It’s a wide change of environment between the two and so much time as well.
I think diversity of wild flowers also lowered, because of more technologically advanced farming. I remember often playing in meadows as a child and it was full of migrated crops, like lucernes and clovers, etc. As the farming style has changed, the amount of the flowers seem to be much lower too and there's much more tall, invasive species, as the land is not mowed or grazed as regularly, as it should be.
Here in Brasil we have more than 300 species of stingless native bees. Those can easily be keep and multiplied at racional boxes. This species varies from 2 millimeters to 1.5 centimeters, so they reach lots of kinds of native species. These bees can be keep at our backyards
I had no idea stingless bees were even a thing, I always thought that was like, one of the universal constants in how they got classified AS a bee in the first place?
Their honey also tastes better. If I ever move to South America, I'm raising Jatai bees.
@@Starfloofle I keep 3 species on my backyard at a big City in Brasil, my neighbors never noticed them
@@chitinskin9860 I have some hives os this species as well
@@Starfloofle they are a lot more annoying.. they fly straight into your nostrils and ears or eyes and hair...
Thank you for this. I feel like I've been saying this for years - there are far more bees than honey bees, and people seem to think that buying honey is somehow a solution to saving all the bees and by extension the whole planet. It's bizarre.
I have a good num of flowering plants that grow over the windows in my office. I notice wasps small bees flys all polinating. I see a few honey bees but the bumbles and small bees wasps are the hardest working the honey bees seem to cherry-pick what they want.
I keep honeybees in my yard, but I also put up boxes for the native bees, and they've been quite successful. I plan to build and install many more of the mason/leaf cutter bee houses.
Great video! My oldest son took an interest in this a while back and is installing native pollinator houses/habitats for solitary bees in our neighborhood and in conjunction with our local Botanical Gardens as his Eagle Scout project. Thank you for bringing more attention to these helpful insect friends!
Extremely important information. My neighbour just picked up beekeeping (without adding any flowering plants to feed them to his garden) and I already thought that this may be very bad news for the (sadly, few) surviving wild pollinators in the area. But now I know for sure. Thanks for the film. I hope many people will see it, understand the danger and ACT!
I’ve been telling this for yearrrrs now and I’m glad you guys are making more awareness to the issue
The U.S. didn't even have honeybees until explorers brought them over. We were fine without them for thousands of years.
iirc there are even documents talking about how native people started to attribute honeybees with the approach of colonists, which is really sad
Because of my grandfather, I've been a beekeeper since I was 6 years old. Our club focuses a lot on saving not just honey bees, but also wild ones and hornets and the kind, so in my early 20's I decided to work on solutions as well.
Everytime we thought we'd have achieved a breakthrough, it didn't even take a single year till our efforts turned out to be futile for all species except for maybe the honey bees in some cases. Nowadays I'm of the opinion that the only real solution would be enclosed vertical farming. This technique has a lot of benefits compared to traditional farming in itself in terms of agriculture, but with the pesticides gone in the outside world, the ecological impact could be way more positive than we think.
Sadly, we will only turn to stuff like this when it's already too late and we have no other choice.
Thank you so much for this doc. There is so much nuance that gets left out in the Save the Bees! Discourse. People don’t realize that honeybees are invasive to the Americas. It’s frustrating that the public has been duped into “saving the bees” to support an industrial monoculture system that ultimately physically and chemically abuses honeybees.
I was a backyard beekeeper for several years here in California. Despite the face that I adore beekeeping, I ultimately stopped as I became worried about our native pollinators having to compete with hives. Interestingly, I noticed our local Beek’s were not quite as worried about the honey bees dying out.
People like easy solutions. It's like electric cars, they buy an e-SUV and they think they are saving the world, when a smaller normal e-car would serve their needs 99% of the time and would require less resources to make and run.
You have hit the nail on the head with a couple of things here. The lack of nuance in discussing situations that we as a society seem to suffer from repeatedly. And the fact that it's not the honeybee that is the problem, but the way our civilisation does things.
Thank you for sharing your evolution and awareness about the priority we must place on native bees! As you know, European honeybees are linked with Big Ag, and legally, honeybees are classed as livestock. And we know the negative impact of non-native livestock on other wildlife, the stripping of lands, ultimate degradation of biodiversity and climate, and human health.
So proud that my garden is host to a tonne of bees, wasps & hover flies. Luckily we share the same tastes in flowers. 🥰🐝🌻
this is absolutely correct and I am a bee keeper. I have no idea how many different pollinators are on my small 48 acres but is a vast amount. multiple bumble bee types. many sweat bee types. corn flies. tiny bees. tiny flies. many types of butterflies and moths. I am blessed to be 3 miles from the closest commercial agriculture. I garden as organically as possible and try to be 100 percent pests control free meaning we don't use anything for insects nor remove by hand unless being devastated in crop damage which doesn't really happen after a few years. by providing buffer zones of wild flowers around each plot we provide areas for insects where predator insects and herbivore insects can maintain balance. we also monitor the wild pollinators to assure we aren't putting too many honey bees into circulation. only bushhog very early Spring and late fall before and after wildflowers bloom. one thing I don't have is monarch butterflies even though we have rescued many caterpillars from developments that were being bulldozed and put them on our milkweed. Don't understand why but is fact. we must as a society end our infatuation with golf course type lawns and allow diversity of native plants. we must each allow a small wild place in our lawns. we must educate ourselves because when the wild pollinators dissappear honey bees will not save us. my honeybees are for me to have honey and therapy as I love them. I don't have delusions that somehow honeybees are required for pollination.
This makes me appreciate my hometown a lot now. We stil see bumblebees, giant honeybees, wasps, hornets and honeybees here. I hope it stays this way for years to come
I live in New Mexico and the other day I took my dogs for a walk and saw honey bees, a carpenter bee and a hive of bumblebees, but the hive was being attacked by a bunch of other bees that were a bit smaller and hade brown wings, I saw a ton of dead and dying bumblebees. 😢🐝
@@spiwolf6998 must have been wasps. They're the ones who usually attack bee hives
@@fishyfish6510 No they were definitely bees. I can upload a video of it.
@@spiwolf6998 my goodness! What kinda hybrid, mutated bees you got over there?!
@@fishyfish6510 I uploaded a video of one of the brown-winged bees still attacking the black-winged bees but I don't really know how to use the TH-cam Studio app on my phone so the quality seems really poor. 😓 Sorry but if anyone can tell me what kind of bees these are I would greatly appreciate it.
Working on it in back garden with mostly Bombus terrestris & lots of fruit trees. the queens arrived a few weeks ago and moved into the holes left by bank voles. I now this type of bumle bee is relativel cmmon but certainly beautiful. Great important message clearly explained - thanks to all experts concerned.
Been trying to explain this to people for years but they just think "never heard of those, so they can't be that important"
Pollinators play a crucial role in the ecosystem by facilitating the process of pollination, which is essential for the reproduction of plants. Pollinators are animals that transfer pollen from the male to the female part of a flower, allowing the fertilization process to take place. Some common pollinators include bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and bats. While pollinators are a diverse group of animals, they all share the common task of helping to ensure that plants can produce fruits, seeds, and new generations of plants.
The importance of pollinators can be seen in the impact that they have on agriculture. Many of the crops that are grown for human consumption, such as fruits, vegetables, and nuts, rely on pollinators to produce their yields. Without pollinators, the yields of some crops could be severely diminished, leading to food shortages and increased food prices. In fact, it has been estimated that the value of pollinators to global food production is around $235 billion per year.
However, the populations of many pollinators are currently under threat. Climate change, habitat loss, pesticide use, and disease are all factors that are contributing to declining populations of bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. This is a cause for concern, as the loss of pollinators could have serious consequences for both the environment and human wellbeing.
There are several steps that can be taken to support and protect pollinators. One such step is to increase the availability of suitable habitats, such as wildflower meadows, hedgerows, and other natural areas. Planting native flowering plants in gardens and green spaces can also be beneficial. Additionally, minimizing pesticide use and promoting sustainable agriculture practices can help to protect pollinators from harm.
In conclusion, pollinators are important animals that play a critical role in maintaining the health and diversity of ecosystems. Despite their importance, many pollinator populations are in decline, highlighting the need for action to protect and support these animals. By taking steps to promote habitat restoration and reduce pesticide use, we can help to ensure that pollinators continue to thrive and that the essential process of pollination can continue.