What we get wrong about saving the bees
Video Overview & Insights
Honeybees get a ton of attention, but they’re not the ones who need help.
I probably could have dragged this video on for 45 minutes, but honestly I have to draw a line somewhere, right? Special thanks to the American Museum of Natural History for letting us film in its new Gilder Center and in its collections, where we looked at hundreds of bee specimens from around the world. If you want to see some more stunning photos of native bees, I really recommend you check out Krystle’s Instagram and US Geological Survey’s Flickr account:
Krystle: https://www.instagram.com/beesip/?hl=en
US Geological Survey: https://www.flickr.com/photos/usgsbiml/
If you find a favorite native bee, let me know below! (I really love the rusty patched bumblebee... What a fluffy stuffed animal.)
—Kim
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Every year there are alarming headlines about honeybees in the US. Each one highlights some grim facts about the fate of these insects and the subsequent fallout: Colonies are collapsing, beekeepers are struggling, and farming is at risk. The stakes are high. Honeybees are estimated to pollinate up to $15 billion worth of food in the US. It’s safe to say that without them our plates and farms would look very different. Naturally, they’ve become the face of a larger movement to “save the bees,” but the truth is … they’ll be fine.
I've done my part, I ripped out my entire garden planted a mixture of wildflower meadow for the bees and butterflies.
It's awesome! First off, it just looks beautiful all those flowers with a large variety of colors , they smell great and my garden has become a airbase.
Bees everywhere I love watching them in the early morning while having a cup of coffee
Honeybees are domesticated animals being cared for by a billion-dollar agriculture industry. They’re so ingrained into American life that it might surprise you that they’re not even from the US — they were brought here by settlers in the 1600s. We give them a ton of attention, and the species as a whole isn’t threatened or even at risk — but other species are.
There are 20,000 other species of bees in the world — over 4,000 in the United States. They’re incredibly diverse, unique, and also important for pollination. Unfortunately, hundreds of these bee species are at risk of being lost forever, but you rarely see those headlines. Watch the video above to learn more.
Native bees my beloved
Read our original article by Benji Jones here: https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2023/1/19/23552518/honey-bees-native-bees-decline
You can find Krystle Hickman’s website and Instagram here:
Save the bees! the native bees, that is (:
https://beesip.com/
https://www.instagram.com/beesip/?hl=en
@4:45 there’s a native blue bee to San Diego that can visit over 10Xs the amount of flowers as a honey bee.
If, after all this, you still want more information on honeybees (I get it), you can read more about colony collapse and other facts here:
https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/colony-collapse-disorder
I can't be the only one who was thinking about the Bee Movie throughout the video..😂
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/are-honey-bees-native-north-america
For more on native bees, I highly recommend the US Geological Survey — they have stunning imagery:
las abejas que esclavizamos a "producir" miel hacen muchisimo daño, ya que le quitan la comida a otras abejas, como hemos sobrepoblado a esta especie se esta haciendo mucho daño por la falta de biodivercidad, si quieres salvar a alas abejas deves de dejar de comprar miel y productos con pesticidas, y por lo tanto carne, ya que las vacas comunmente son alimentadas con plantas con demasiados pesticidas, y para producir un kilo de carne necesitas 4 kilos de plantas a tope de pesticidas
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-many-species-native-bees-are-united-states
https://www.usgs.gov/centers/eesc/science/native-bee-inventory-and-monitoring-lab
To bee, or not to bee... that is the question...
🐝 🐝🐝
These articles highlight some of the problems honeybees, hobby beekeeping, and more:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-honey-bees/
🇺🇸👨💼💫GC 🦅👍🌺🌺🐝🐝🐝🍯🍯🍯🌻🌻🌸🌸🙋♂️😊
https://www.nwf.org/Home/Magazines/National-Wildlife/2021/June-July/Gardening/Honey-Bees
https://pollinators.ie/too-many-honey-bees-can-threaten-wild-bees/
Buy organic!
https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/legal-petition-urges-us-forest-service-protect-native-bees-stop-rubber-stamping-commercial-beehives-federal-lands-2020-07-29/
And finally, you can find some amazing footage of Buzz pollination from PBS and the Smithsonian Channel:
got sent here from a minecraft video lol
https://youtu.be/J7q9Kn1rhRc
https://youtu.be/SZrTndD1H10
🎉
Vox is an explanatory newsroom on a mission to help everyone understand our weird, wonderful, complicated world, so that we can all help shape it. Part of that mission is keeping our work free. You can help us do that by making a gift: http://www.vox.com/givenow
Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE
We rescued a bumblebee hive over the weekend. Please check out what we did and give us any feedback.
Follow Vox on TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@voxdotcom
Check out our articles: https://www.vox.com/
A simple thing we can do in our own back yard is put in a mason bee and leaf cutter bee house. I built my first mason bee tower 2 years ago. They were so happy, they were trying to move in while I was still building it. I had about 6-10 move in the first year. 2 years later over 200 and counting. All native. I did not buy any. Just let them come on their own.
Listen to our podcasts: https://www.vox.com/podcasts
Thank you for helping us focusing on saving native bees!
More User Perspectives
Did you.... just drop a pun at the end?
@steve-macnairThankyou
@AmandaEverson-b5wJust let them bee
@dgieselerThank you! I’ve been saying this for years! We only focus on honey bees because they provide us with something we consume. Our native pollinators are so important and need our help. They need diversity. We’ve created this lack of diversity by monoculture crops, and demolished our natural biodiversity. We’ve paved the way for destruction. Please start making spaces for native bees. Make your home a safe space for them.
@MarisaCastellano-b5lSince they banned neonicotinoid pesticides in the EU, I've seen a remarkable increase of insects. And with that, just a lot more wildflowers and more wildlife. I've seen birds of prey every summer the past couple of years. I had never seen one before in my life. I can't say for sure that it's absolutely due to the pesticide ban, but I've been interested in biodiversity for 20 years and have been paying attention. The years ~2005 to ~2020 was so devoid of insects and flowers. Nothing like the country I grew up in where we were swarmed with hornets/bees as soon as you had an ice cream in summer and picking 7 kinds of wildflowers for midsummer.
@98ZaiI have a tiny yard in an hoa. I can only dedicate maybe a hundred square feet of my backyard to the wild. A stripper on my fence and a couple of islands I can walk around. I have actively flowering plants from the fields around my house prior to their development. I have managed to import into my sterile developer home backyard what was in these fields before the houses were built. I have for many years now enjoyed the dozen or so pollinators they come to my yard. I can observe their numbers week-to-week and see fluctuations in their local food supply. At the end of summer I had a massive influx of bees immediately following the butchering of the last and most wild of fields near my home. I have slowly introduced even smaller patches of wild in my front yard, islands surrounded by grass. I manage them and keep them as attractive as I can in the front yard.
@kludgescraftsplus8631So to summary, we need to save honey bees so we can save the other bees. Got it. Bee without Honey is useless and should be extinct.
@gxguy2906More demonstration that the single-minded obsession with climate change is at best misguided, and perhaps intentionally distracting from the real problem. Habitat loss. The #1 ecological problem. Nobody wants to hear about it because we just want to spread.
@C20H25ON3Thanks for saving good people like you
@rayrocher6887Thanks for trying, save bees and the world
@rayrocher6887I really like Vox's work but really wished you focused less on the US. The data would be more relevant (and it's probably available).
@giovannafranca1434so in short... european (bees) killing the native (bees) 🤔 sounds familiar
@wmc4920Warning - Doctor Who Reference:
It's because of the Medusa Cascade.
Kimberly is so smart and pretty! Wow!
@vanderszpakLol i agree about the filming in public..
@Z-AckLove it
@nohandleincludedintimeAre you the replacement for cleo
@joel455667Insects are Evil Spirit Made. God made Butterflies 🦋 to make a pretty insect.
@nataliehelferty1438What an amazing video ! Learned a lot ! Thanks a bunch for sharing !!!!!!!!!!!
@RafaelCardoso299Human is causing mass extinction of most animals. Perhaps we can stop increasing human population
@ps3301Gateway Bees. Great band name.
@sassulusmagnusthey should just ban lawn
@leastconcern4152The truth always makes me feel lied to 😢.
@MyTurquoiseCrayonOh God it must be awful to be an environmentalist and fill your consciousness with an endless series of (media-driven) "crises."
@MalachiWhite-tw7hlThis video is so needed! I honestly didn't know there were that many bee species and I also only thought honey bees were important... I'd stomp a bumble bee🤣 now I wont
@AB-in2tjWhat i know about bees is because of BeeMovie
@joshuayanez7674What this video taught me - don't get all my bee knowledge from "The Bee Movie" 😂
@gonnermalegsThis is wild i was wondering if i accidentally unsibscrubed or that vox went under but i conme back only to find theyre being mostly shadowbanned from me i watch their videos but it seems like only one every few month shows up
@nikolaybondarev7407Since they are not native, and displace native bee species, shouldn't european honey bees be classified as invasive?
@scottrichards3587People are driven buy money and product. Make something useful to a human and its the greatest selection pressure there is. The problem is funding comes from places that don't realize the usefulness... maybe? Could protecting native bees help to increase yield in new world crops? ...thus making money from product. That's something farmers, at least, can get behind. Without incentive, I don't think people will spend time and money trying to help, even with the threat of a poorer future when no help is given. We are not very good investors in the future innless we'll see immediate results.
@daniell8331Need to stop clearing so much land and cutting lawns so frequently
@Magnum2PIThe number accomplish in helping bees is starting a garden. With 9 garden beds and hundreds of plants, I've seen so many native bees and honey bees pollinating them and can tell this is the number one solution to saving the bees and ecosystem. Stop worry about pristine lawns and for god sake stop spraying that RoundUp. Actually get your hands in the dirt and do some real work.
@TechOutAdam03:39 SONORA LEGAL COM TEMPLATE AO REDOR
@pedrofarias2336Here in Australia there are native stingless honey bees that can make honey that's healthier & tastier than European honey bees, but they're being pushed out by the European species. It's really frustrating because people try to "save the bees" by introducing even more of the invasive species and making the problem worse.
@ExhaustedOwl"we're talking about the loss of everything that depends on pollination (natural) in the food web" ... So basically we become completly dependent on human grown food sold by a few companies.
I'd say the plan is working perfectly for them