Human Footprint

(whooshing) (Shane) It's strange that we've found kinship with a being so unlike us.

(mysterious music) Six jointed legs... (bees buzzing) ...four shimmering wings... (bees buzzing) ...and an alien array of senses.

(whooshing) -(bees buzzing) -(birds chirping) Yet somehow, we not only see ourselves in honey bees... ...we see our best selves.

(dramatic music) Their devotion to family.

The wondrous structures they build.

Their well-ordered society.

And, of course, their incomparable work ethic.

(man) Flex, win And I'mma do it again (Shane) But if history's written by the victors, the story of bees is often told as the tale of just one bee... (bees buzzing) ...the one we made our partner in global domination.

(man) They watch me do it again (Shane) Yet the honey bee, for all its charms, is just one species.

There are 20,000 more.

(shuffling sounds) (whooshing) Bees helped build the world as we know it.

But today, we're putting them, and maybe ourselves, in danger.

(distorted lyrics) It's time to find out what the Human Footprint means for bees... (bees buzzing) ...because we might want to watch our step.

Welcome to the age of humans... (record scratch) (energetic music) ...where one species can change everything.

And what we do reveals who we truly are.

This is Human Footprint.

(horn honks) (record scratch) (whooshing) Take a look around you, and it might seem like people are in charge here.

(traffic whirs) (mysterious music) But Earth's eight billion humans share this planet with half a quintillion insects... (insects clattering) ...more than 50 million bugs for every man, woman, and child.

(insects humming) As a rule, we aren't thrilled about that.

(thudding slap) But there's one big exception.

(bees buzzing) Humans don't just tolerate bees... ("I Just Wanna Love You" by Jay-Z) ...we celebrate them.

- I'm a hustler, baby - Hov', I'm a hustler - I just want you to know - I gotta let you know (Shane) Because pollination, the work bees do just to live... (bees buzzing) ...brings food to our tables.

(honey dripping) We've been caring for one species, the honey bee, for 4,000 years.

(Pharrell) Now give it to me (Omillio) Gimme that funk, that sweet, that nasty, that gushy stuff (Shane) And everywhere people go, they go too.

(bees buzzing) (Timothy) Honey bees do not originate from here.

They're not from Michigan.

They're not from the United States.

They had to be introduced.

Honey bees originated from Africa.

(mellow music) (Shane) Timothy Jackson and his partner Nicole Lindsey love exploring nature in the Motor City.

(bees buzzing) Since 2017, they've been using honey bees to bring their fellow Detroiters along for the journey.

(Timothy) We like to season our smoker tool here at Detroit Hives, and I do mean season it.

We use dry lavender, a little bit of dry basil, a little bit of thyme.

(Shane) With their non-profit, Detroit Hives, Tim and Nicole educate students about pollinators and give them a sweet taste of life as an urban beekeeper.

(bees buzzing) (Nicole) I'm gonna give everybody kinda like a chance to give it a little smoke.

Just give it a couple of puffs 'cause everybody's gonna get a chance.

(Shane) Nicole and Tim weren't always passionate about bees.

(soft music) (Timothy) Detroit was a city that was known for its high crime, many vacant lots, and low employment rates.

The city put out a call to action where they said our city had well over 90,000 vacant lots and they were looking for residents, businesses, nonprofits to buy them back for as low as $100.

(bees buzzing) (Shane) Tim got interested in bees after treating a stubborn cough with local, raw honey.

So, he thought, why not revitalize a vacant lot with a bustling beehive?

(bees buzzing) (Timothy) We had just enough money to form our nonprofit, to take beekeeping courses, and to purchase our first plot of land.

Like, what was people's response?

Were you just like, you know, "I'm getting into bees"?

Like, how do people respond to it?

Most people thought I was crazy, you know.

-(laughs) -(bees buzzing) (Shane) But Tim and Nicole stuck with it and discovered a sort of kinship with bees.

(Timothy) I see myself in a lot of these insects.

(bees buzzing) When you think about tall grass and wildflowers and weeds, they're sometimes viewed as unkempt and untamed.

And sometimes I see my hair in that, I see my hair as a part of the habitat.

Yeah.

(Timothy) When you think about insects, they're often mislabeled, they're often misunderstood.

And I often see myself in the same-- I often see our people in that same predicament.

(Shane) Ironically, hard economic times have made Detroit a pollinator paradise, with thousands of vacant lots that don't get mowed or sprayed with pesticides.

(tarsus flapping) And all over the city, people make bees happy by growing flowers and vegetables.

(bright music) (Nicole) Watch out, baby.

So, if you hear me saying, "baby," "sweetheart," all those things, I'm talking to the bees.

(Shane) Okay, I won't take it personally.

(laughing) (bees buzzing) Each hive gets a health checkup every couple of weeks.

(Nicole) Major things that I'm checking for is to make sure that they're bringing in nectar and pollen.

(bees buzzing) Also that the queen is laying eggs.

(hip-hop music) (Shane) A healthy queen can lay 2,000 eggs per day.

Most of those hatch into female larvae that develop into workers, which care for the queen, feed the brood, and visit flowers to collect pollen and nectar.

(bee buzzing) (bees buzzing) Male bees, also known as drones, only have one job.

(Shelene) You can't ... with Queen Bee (Governor) Y'all can get with Queen (Shelene) Queen Bee (Nicole) They only, uh, mate with the queen.

-Okay.

-Yep.

As soon as they mate with the queen, they immediately die.

Yeah.

(Shane) Just like a man.

(soft music) Honey bees spend the summer storing energy in the form of honey, which helps them survive the winter.

(Nicole) Here in Michigan, we make sure that we leave about a hundred pounds of honey for them to make it over the wintertime.

How many total pounds of honey can one of these colonies produce?

(Nicole) A good season, maybe like 200 pounds.

(Shane) Nicole and Tim harvest the excess and sell the artisanal raw honey in Detroit's markets and co-ops.

But their mission goes deeper.

(Timothy) When we first created our organization, we wanted to find a way, how do we change the narrative about our city?

I have a fancy quote that says, "You can't get gangster around flowers."

(Shane laughs) No one wants to fight around flowers or have a negative vibration around flowers and plants and insects.

(Shane) "Can't get gangster around flowers," that--that very quickly just became my favorite quote.

(laughing) (bees buzzing) Detroit Hives is fostering healthy communities through bees and urban gardens.

(mellow music) (Timothy) If we have an environment where bees are not thriving, that's a direct reflection of what our health will be.

People and pollinators both have a need for a healthy environment.

(speedboat engine humming) (Shane) Our lives have been intertwined with the lives of bees since the very dawn of agriculture.

(woman) Baby (Shane) Today, most of the world's crop varieties, and a third of all crop production, depends on pollinators like bees.

("Baby" by J Dilla) (woman) Baby (Shane) And even before we started managing honey bees, countless species of wild bees made human life possible.

(whooshing) (mysterious music) (Margarita) I call squash bees, like, caffeinated bees... -Okay.

-...because they fly so fast that you can barely see them.

(Shane) They have a very Type A personality.

-Yes!

-Okay.

-That's why we get along.

-Okay.

(laughing) Okay.

(woman) Lit, lit (hip-hop music) (Shane) Meet Margarita Lpez-Uribe.

(whooshing) ("Fr Elise" by Beethoven) She loves the piano almost as much as she loves bees.

Almost.

(woman) Ow!

(hip-hop music) (Shane) At Penn State's Frost Entomological Museum, Margarita gave me a crash course in bee biology.

(woman) Somebody do it like me What makes a bee a bee?

(Margarita) That's actually not a trivial question.

(soft music) It's really, really hard to sometimes differentiate bees from related wasps.

(Shane) But there's one big difference.

Bees feed their babies with pollen and nectar.

Their wasp ancestors fed their young other insects.

(bee buzzing) So, bees are basically wasps that went vegetarian more than 100 million years ago.

(bee tarsomeres pattering) And that lifestyle change has made them pretty successful.

(whooshing) How many species of bee are there in North America?

About 4,000.

That's a lot of bees.

And if you ask Margarita, most of those 4,000 species don't get their due.

So, if bees were NSYNC, honey bees would be like Justin Timberlake and then the rest, they're there... ("Bye Bye Bye" by NSYNC) ...but nobody's paying as close attention to them.

Exactly, yes.

(NSYNC) Bye, bye, bye Bye, bye (Margarita) There is a lot of diversity.

(bees buzzing) (NSYNC) Bye, bye (Margarita) Most bees are definitely not like honey bees.

(Justin) Oh, oh (bee buzzing) (Shane) To start with, most bees don't live in colonies.

(bees buzzing) Only about one in ten bee species are social.

-(mysterious music) -(bee buzzing) Most are solitary, with individual females building nests in soil, wood, and other materials.

(soil swooshes) For more than a decade, Margarita's been digging into the story of one solitary species, and its unexpected connection with us.

What is a squash bee?

(Margarita) They are about a honey bee size.

(energetic music) But if you look closely, they are quite different.

(bee buzzing) (buzzing distorts) Squash bees have these very long hairs that are actually adapted to the very large and spiky pollen grains of the squash plants.

-(bee buzzing) -(soft music) (Shane) This adaptation to one kind of pollen sets them apart from honey bees.

(Margarita) Honey bees are generalists.

They use a lot of different types of plants to feed their babies.

Squash bees are highly specialized.

They only use the pollen from one plant genus, and that plant genus happens to be domesticated and used for agriculture.

(mellow music) (Shane) Here in Pennsylvania, seeing squash bees in their element means heading to a pumpkin farm in Amish country.

(Margarita) Hey!

Here you go.

(Shane) So, what is the difference between how bees use pollen versus nectar?

(Margarita) So, the nectar is giving the developing larvae energy and the pollen is primarily protein and lipids.

(Shane) It's a daily balanced breakfast.

(Margarita laughs) Watching the squash bees, you start to notice how different they are from honey bees.

For one thing, a lot of these bees are males.

(bright musical flourish) (Haddaway) What is love?

Baby, don't hurt me (Margarita) The males usually emerge first.

They need to do two things.

They need to find energy.

(Haddaway) Baby, don't hurt me (Margarita) And they need to find mates.

(Haddaway) Don't hurt me no more (Shane) Once the females emerge, they spend almost as much time fighting off over-excited males as they do collecting food.

(Haddaway) What is love?

(Shane) And every female has another huge job to do: digging a nest for her babies.

(Haddaway) What is love?

(Margarita) Imagine yourself, you know, removing all of that soil from the ground, right?

Like to dig something like half a meter deep.

(mellow music) (Shane) Of course, the males aren't helping at all.

(Margarita) Oh, no, no, they are not in the nest at all.

Every single time.

Squash bees share these fields with honey bees and bumblebees.

(Margarita) You see how clumsy they are compared to squash bees, which are, you know, like, very precise.

(Shane) Seems a little judgmental but that's--that's fine.

(Margarita) Okay.

(bee buzzing) (Shane) Even in a world filled with busy bees, squash bees stand out.

They're laser-focused on the task at hand, whether that's building a nest and provisioning babies, or trying to mate with anything that moves... bumble bees included.

There's a reason all these bees are here.

Pumpkin flowers are a great source of nectar.

But their pollen, that's a different story.

(hip-hop music) (Margarita) Squash plants have, you know, very large, spiky pollen that is not easy to digest for bees, right?

Oh!

Okay.

That might seem counterintuitive, but a lot of plants have adaptations to protect their pollen.

Because they don't want pollinators to eat it, just move it from one flower to another.

(bee buzzing) Squash pollen can actually damage a baby bee's digestive tract.

So, most species clean themselves to avoid bringing the weapons-grade pollen back to their nests.

But squash bees can't get enough.

(audible chewing) Researchers still don't understand exactly how they can eat squash pollen without any ill effects, but they've been doing it for a long time.

(soft music) Squash bees and squashes lived side-by-side in Mexico and the desert Southwest for at least eight million years before humans showed up.

(energetic music) Then, everything changed.

(narrator) Planting seeds of squash.

(hip-hop music) (Margarita) The first evidence of domestication of a squash was in Mexico about 10,000 years ago.

(Shane) People used these early squashes as storage vessels and fishing floats, and sometimes ate the seeds.

This knowledge spread, along with the plants themselves.

I imagine it's pretty good news for squash bees.

Absolutely.

(Shane) Margarita and her colleagues analyzed squash bee DNA to learn more.

(bee buzzing) (Margarita) In addition to the range expansion, we see a population expansion.

(Shane) About a thousand years ago, the bees' population started growing exponentially; just as Indigenous Americans began growing squash, beans, and maize, the so-called "three sisters," at larger scales.

(mysterious music) The DNA also revealed something unusual happening here, in the Northeast.

(Margarita) 20% of the protein coding genes show signatures of positive selection, right?

-So, it's-- -Wow.

Yeah, it's a very strong signature.

(Shane) The genetic work uncovered telltale signs of recent natural selection in these bees.

The question is, natural selection for what?

(Margarita) There is something interesting happening with the sensory system of the bees.

We don't know exactly what that means yet, but... (Shane) Okay.

But Margarita has some ideas.

The Northeastern U.S. doesn't have native squash plants, so squash bees followed ancient farmers here and, today, rely completely on cultivated squash, which produce a different cocktail of odors than their wild ancestors did.

How does one go about figuring out how a bee smells?

(Margarita) We are using a technique called electroantennograms.

(Shane) The researchers isolate airborne chemicals from squash flowers, both wild and domestic, and use them to test the sensitivity of squash bee antennae.

It's a step toward discovering whether squash bees have evolved to locate cultivated squash flowers, which move from year to year as farmers rotate their crops.

However they're doing it, it's clear that squash bees can thrive on our farms, which is good news.

(Margarita) We know that agriculture, per se, is not bad for bees.

We have the example of the squash bees, right?

Like they thrive in agricultural settings.

But the intensification of agriculture is definitely not good for, like, any bees.

(hip-hop music) (Shane) All too often, modern agriculture means vast monocultures, powerful pesticides, and constant disturbance.

Three strikes against bees.

(bee buzzing) But our food system also can't function without them.

(bees buzzing) So, to keep food on the shelves, we're pushing our partnerships with bees to the limit.

-(wings flapping) -(bee buzzing) (soft music) (John) The conversation I've had more than once with an almond grower is I'm his best friend till the bloom is done and the day he releases me, it's like, "John, get your stinging, filthy insects off my ranch."

(laughing) (water flowing) (hip-hop music) (Shane) John Miller grows some gorgeous gourds in his North Dakota garden.

(garden shears snip) But this isn't another squash bee story.

(bees buzzing) John is a 4th-generation commercial beekeeper, which means it's time to get my bee suit back on.

(record scratch) ("The Rain" by Missy Elliott) (Missy Elliott) Me, I'm supa fly Supa-dupa fly - Supa-dupa fly - I can't stand the rain (Shane) Miller Honey Farms, now owned by John Miller's son, runs about 16,000 honey bee colonies from its home base in Gackle, North Dakota.

(bees buzzing) So, there's always work to be done.

Oh, that's way heavier than I thought it was gonna be.

(John) Honey is heavy.

It's about 12 pounds a gallon.

(Shane) Wow.

The upper boxes are where the bees store honey.

But work your way down, and you might find the queen.

Oh yeah.

Look at her.

(John) Here she is navigating on the frame like, "Oh my gosh, there's way too much light here."

(Shane) That's incredible.

(bees buzzing) With 20,000 species to choose from, you might wonder why Apis mellifera, the European honey bee, is the favorite of beekeepers the world over.

(bees buzzing) (John) This guy right here is the global champion of honey production and pollination because she's manageable.

-Mm.

-You know, she'll make this deal like, "Okay, I'll live in this box.

You can put me on the semi and haul me to California and two hours later I'll be dialed in and know what to do."

(Shane) Okay.

And it turns out, the guy who first figured out that last part was John Miller's great-grandfather, Nephi.

The O.G.

Miller was keeping about 300 hives in Utah when, in December 1907, he visited southern California.

(mellow music) (John) The epiphany for him was, "I see these bees working these orange trees in the middle of winter."

Mm.

(John) "I wonder if I could get my bees down here?"

(Shane) Nephi realized that if his bees summered in Utah and wintered in California, he could get two honey crops a year.

But that was easier said than done.

(John) There was no way to do it.

The roads were dirt.

He went to Union Pacific Railroad Company and he said, "Have you ever thought about moving bees on a rail car?"

(Shane) And what was their response?

(John) They threw him out of the building.

(Shane) I imagine so.

It's not surprising.

It's like, "You wanna do what with what now?"

-Yeah.

-But eventually, he convinced them to let him try, and it actually worked.

By 1926, Miller, his sons, and associates produced the world's first million-pound honey crop.

Today, John Miller is still in the family business.

And they're still moving bees around the country.

(John) Let's start the year on January 15th.

(Shane) Okay.

(John) We are in the process of moving our colonies from North Dakota to California for the almond bloom.

(Shane) Almond trees cover more than 1.5 million acres of California.

That's more than the entire state of Delaware.

(John) So, it attracts virtually every movable commercial beehive in America.

(Shane) Wow.

(John) Whether you're a beekeeper in Massachusetts pollinating cranberries, or you're a Florida beekeeper, -you go.

-Okay.

(John) So, it's like this biggest paid pollination event on Earth.

(energetic music) (Shane) Three-quarters of the world's almonds, plus most of the country's managed honey bees, equals pandemonium.

(John) The flowers are in bloom and it smells so good and the bees tumble out of the entrances.

-Oh, wow.

-It's unlike anything.

(bees buzzing) (birds chirping) (bees buzzing) (Shane) Then, after just a few weeks, the show is over.

(bee buzzing) (John) We're usually released March 10th from the almonds, we'll move to the orange groves.

(Shane) This next leg of the tour might take the bees elsewhere in California or north to Washington.

But by mid-June, all of the Millers' bees come back to North Dakota.

(John) There's like 40 semis in 40 days.

(Shane) With no more crops to pollinate, the bees turn to storing energy.

(John) The northern plains are kind of this sweet spot in North America for light, mild-flavored honey.

(Shane) But getting honey from the hive to the shelf is a journey in itself.

From the bee yards, workers bring the upper boxes of each hive to the honey house.

(mellow music) They remove the frames, and a machine slices the waxy caps off the honey cells.

A giant centrifuge spins the frames to extract the honey from the honeycomb.

And another machine removes any beeswax that's still in the mix.

Finally, the pure honey is pumped into barrels to ship to a packing company.

(whooshing) When the honey harvest is finished, it's time for the next big move.

(John) September 25th to October 10th, the bees move into the indoor storage building.

(Shane) That's the off season?

(John) That's the off season.

(Shane) John's bees used to spend the winter in potato cellars in Idaho.

But these days, they stay here.

(light clicks) It's empty now, but in a couple months, this warehouse will house half a billion bees.

(mysterious music) (John) The whole idea is dark, and quiet, and cold.

The colony can actually enter a deeply restful state.

(soft music) (Shane) A little R&R so the bees are ready for next year's almond bloom, because the pollination they do is just as important as the honey they make.

Which of those branches is a larger portion of the business?

(John) That's a really good question because over time it's changed dramatically.

Okay.

In Nephi's world, it was honey and nothing else.

(John) As the almond industry emerged in 1970, that equation changed.

(Shane) Mm.

(John) Our business model is probably 70% in pollination services, maybe 65%, and 35% in honey production income.

(bees buzzing) (Shane) What does our food system look like without bees?

(John) Walmart would have a lot of corn and a lot of rice, and I would be the greeter.

Okay.

Okay, okay.

Many of the crops we love most depend on pollination, and a lot of that work is done by commercial honey bees.

They play such a crucial role in our food system that it's more than just beekeepers invested in their well-being.

Hey, Sammy, it's Shane.

How's it going?

It's going pretty well.

How are you?

(Shane) Dr. Sammy Ramsey has one heck of a voice.

I'm shedding my skin 'cause for 17 years you're the only one (Shane) In another life, he might have even brought bugs to Broadway.

(Dr. Ramsey) There's plenty of cicadas in the trees (bright music) (Shane) But he became an entomologist instead.

In his lab at the University of Colorado, Sammy studies parasites and diseases that affect honey bees.

(woman) There is no... (Dr. Ramsey) So, I want you to take a moment and imagine a tick-like creature.

It's about the size of a sesame seed.

Already uncomfortable, go on.

(Dr. Ramsey) Now this creature is able to climb onto the bodies of honey bees, but instead of just sucking out a little bit of their blood like a tick would, they're releasing these digestive enzymes into the body of the bee and liquefying part of the bee's liver and then sucking that out of the bee.

So, probably the evilest sesame seed you can imagine.

(soft music) (Shane) The sci-fi horror that Sammy just described is Varroa destructor.

It's a parasitic mite from Asia that was accidentally introduced to Florida in 1987.

Here in the U.S., Varroa spread fast, and it wasn't long before John Miller found them in his hives.

(bees buzzing) (John) All of a sudden it was like the sky was falling.

And the losses were staggering.

(bees buzzing) (Dr. Ramsey) We have documented cases of annual losses in honey bees going from 1% to 2% all the way up to 60% to 64%.

Like, that much of the honey bee population being wiped out yearly.

(Shane) Researchers struggled to find methods of controlling Varroa.

It's tough to kill a little bug without killing the bigger bug it lives on.

(Dr. Ramsey) We found some chemicals that work.

The problem was we usually found them one at a time, and when you only have one chemical that you're able to utilize, what usually results is resistance.

(Shane) The mites evolved, and the control measures stopped working.

(Dr. Ramsey) We've had this happen at least four times with Varroa mites, and a lot of bees die as a result of it.

-(bees buzzing) -(bee smoker puffing) (Shane) European honey bees don't have natural defenses against Varroa.

Given time, they might evolve resistance to the mites.

But we can't afford to give them that time.

(Dr. Ramsey) Our honey bees have become indispensable in terms of food security.

About $18 billion per year of the United States economy is the result of what honey bees are bringing to the table.

So, we don't have the luxury of saying, "Well, I guess we can let this disease run its course and see how many bees are left over."

(Shane) So, we're stuck in a vicious cycle of treatment and resistance.

Nothing illustrates this Catch-22 like the four-billion-dollar U.S. almond industry.

(John) The almond tree is central to the survival of North American beekeeping right now.

(Shane) Okay.

But trucking 1.5 million honey bee colonies into California each year isn't necessarily what's best for the bees.

(Dr. Ramsey) And if a few of those bees are sick, a lot of other bees are gonna take that back home.

We've had enough "super spreader" events now where we understand how this works.

(Shane) And Varroa isn't the only danger.

Honey bees are plagued by pathogens like bacteria, fungi, and viruses.

In a phenomenon called "colony collapse disorder," worker bees just leave their hives and never come back.

(bee buzzing) No one knows the exact cause, but it's probably a combination of disease, pesticides, and stress.

(bees buzzing) In early 2025, beekeepers reported catastrophic overwinter colony losses, which some experts think could be the worst in U.S. history.

(bees buzzing) And there are other threats looming.

(Dr. Ramsey) There's another mite called the Tropilaelaps mite or the Tropi mite; its populations grow even faster than Varroa mites.

And it's moving around the world.

(Shane) John Miller is worried that his industry is still so focused on Varroa that they can't see the next pollinator pandemic just over the horizon.

This one is five times worse than Varroa.

And, like, we're asleep at the wheel again.

-Yeah.

-It amazes me.

(Shane) But John's not giving up on bees.

(bees buzzing) (John) In this 50-year walk, I think the more I know about bees, the less I know about bees.

It's not easy, but it is the best job ever.

(bees buzzing) (Shane) Our food system is built on the wings of bees and the backs of beekeepers.

On the fragile premise that when a crop needs pollinating, we can always muster enough honey bees to do the job.

(bees buzzing) But we're already pushing honey bees to their limits.

Maybe it's time to diversify our pollinator portfolio.

(bees buzzing) (energetic music) (Mark) Honey bees, they'll sting you for no reason at all.

They're nasty.

I mean, they're important but they're nasty.

That's my take on the whole thing.

(Shane) Mark Wagoner has traveled to more than 30 countries, but he spends every summer right here in Washington's Walla Walla Valley, where he's a third-generation alfalfa seed farmer.

(bees buzzing) And he couldn't do it without a few million little helpers.

(bees buzzing) (Mark) So, agriculture in the Walla Walla Valley is unique in that we don't have any water in the summertime.

And so people like my grandfather, my father, and the neighbors around here figured out that they can grow alfalfa.

(Shane) More specifically, Mark produces alfalfa seed, which other farmers use to grow alfalfa hay, which is fed to livestock, like dairy cows.

Alfalfa originated in the Middle East.

But Mark's grandfather observed wild bees visiting his alfalfa crop here, in Washington.

(Mark) And then in the 1950s, an entomologist from Washington State University named Herman Menke came down here and figured out that these alkali bees were pollinating the alfalfa.

(Shane) The growers noticed that they harvested the most alfalfa seeds in areas with lots of alkali bees, so they worked with the scientists to lure in more bees.

(Mark) This is my dad and I in, like, 1964 on one of the first artificial bee beds he built.

(Shane) Oh, that's amazing.

(mysterious music) "Bee beds" are patches of soil that farmers maintain for the solitary, ground-nesting alkali bees.

These bees won't just nest anywhere.

They look for just the right level of soil moisture, delivered here through a network of buried pipes.

(Mark) When we start up, I probably spend four hours a day -trying to get the water going.

-Oh, wow, (Mark) Like the first couple of weeks, it just drives me insane.

(record scratch) (Shane) And water is only part of the formula.

(Mark) Then we put salt, NaCl.

We get it in 2,500-pound bags from Salt Lake City.

We put it in a little fertilizer spreader and spread it on the bee bed in April.

(Shane) The salt forms a crust and keeps the soil from drying out.

And punching thousands of tiny holes in the soil, like little starter homes, helps convince the bees to move in.

When everything's just right, you can get up to a hundred nests per square foot.

(bees buzzing) And Mark's 18 bee beds cover about 30 acres of his farm.

(record scratch) (hip-hop music) Alkali bees are worth it because they're extraordinary pollinators.

(bee buzzing) Alfalfa can produce 200 million flowers per acre.

And pollinating them is actually kinda tricky.

(bee buzzing) (Mark) If I can do this right, I can push down on that-- it's called the keel.

Then the stamen pops out.

-Oh.

-Yeah.

See that?

(Shane) Yeah!

Alfalfa flowers have spring-loaded sexy parts.

(soft explosion) When a bee "trips" the keel petal, the stamens snap upward and release the pollen.

(mellow music) (Mark) Supposedly that hits the honey bees and they don't like it.

(Shane) Okay.

(Mark) 'Cause I told you, they're nasty!

(Shane) Honey bees avoid getting pollen-slapped by sidestepping the keel petal, taking nectar without pollinating the flower.

(bee buzzing) That's why Mark isn't too fond of honey bees.

And he's not alone.

(Mark) We actually have a county ordinance that we passed that limits the number of honey bees people can put here.

Keeps them out of here to protect our native bees.

(wings flapping) (Shane) In other parts of the U.S., the go-to pollinators for this crop are alfalfa leafcutter bees, a specialist that evolved with alfalfa in the Middle East.

(whooshing) But here, the native alkali bees do an even better job.

(bee buzzing) (Mark) The female bees, all they wanna do is go gather pollen and lay eggs.

-Mm-hm.

-And the male bees, they just want to pollinate the female bees.

(laughs) ("Single Ladies" by Beyonc) - All the single ladies - All the single ladies (Shane) The alkali bee's short adult life lines up perfectly with the alfalfa bloom.

(Beyonc) Now put your hands up (Shane) A single female can visit 5,000 flowers and collect four million pollen grains a day.

The results speak for themselves.

(Beyonc) Woah-oh-oh (Mark) Well, see, if you have a thousand acres of seed and you get 400 pounds more per acre by having alkali bees.

At $2.50 a pound, that's a million bucks.

(Shane) Million dollar bees.

(cash register rings) And yet for all of their benefits, these native bees have mostly flown under the radar for the last 70 years.

(bee buzzing) (Doug) I bet you there's people that live around here that probably don't even know the relationship exists.

(whooshing) (Shane) That's Doug Walsh.

He's the state entomologist for wine grapes.

(DJ Drama) You know how I've aged (Shane) Not a bad gig for a bug guy.

(DJ Drama) And I'm only gettin' better (Lute) I got a flow like wine Half the time I'm out of time, but I still get what's mine (Shane) But he also works with local alfalfa growers, so he knows how special the alkali bees are.

Is this something that's widely done around the country?

Nope, it's done, really, right within an eight-mile circle of here, with us at the center of the circle.

(Shane) Turns out, this little valley is the only place on Earth where farmers manage wild, ground-nesting bees for commercial pollination.

And with the alkali bees' help, they grow a quarter of the U.S. alfalfa seed crop.

So, the growers really take care of their bees, even adopting strict speed limits near bee beds.

(hip-hop music) In 2012, the state wanted to build a new highway through the valley.

(Doug) In fact, the highway went right over one of the bee beds.

(Shane) A 2024 study estimated that in the Western U.S. alone, tens of millions of bees are killed by vehicles every day.

So, the growers needed to know: Would the alkali bees fly over the new highway, or would the fast-moving traffic be a problem?

(engine humming) The State Department of Transportation asked Doug to find out.

(engine revving) ("O Fortuna" by Carl Orff) I guess my first question is, what...the hell is this thing?

This is what I call the vehicular bee sweeper.

(Shane) This Mad Max contraption has just one job: motoring down country roads, gathering bees in its 14 nets.

(soft music) Doug and his students counted the bees in each net and crunched the numbers.

(hip-hop music) (Doug) Just look at the nets and seeing that it proved that all the bees were hugging the ground.

-Yeah.

-Especially on a windy day like today.

(Shane) So, the new highway would put the low-flying bees at risk.

(Doug) We did actually get the Department of Transportation to move the entire freeway over a couple of hundred yards and over a hill.

So, I take credit for a bend in the road.

(Shane) Okay.

But alkali bees face a bigger problem than roads, because they share the fields with alfalfa pests.

Pesticides can be lethal to bees.

But ignoring the pests isn't an option.

They can easily destroy an entire crop.

(soft music) So, working with Doug, the growers have come up with ways to fight pests without harming the bees.

(Doug) None of them will spray insecticides during the day.

(machine spraying) (Shane) The growers only spray once the bees are done foraging for the day, and the chemicals are dry by the morning.

(Doug) Hence the alkali bees are not exposed.

(Shane) But this scenario is unique.

Alfalfa seed is by far the most important crop here, so everyone's invested in alkali bees.

(bees buzzing) (soft music) People have tried bringing these bees to other alfalfa-growing areas, but they haven't been able to thrive there.

(Doug) I really do think it-- it probably is a product of insecticide exposure of the bees in these other growing areas that have a greater diversity of crops.

(Shane) In areas with more diverse crops and greater pesticide use, alfalfa seed growers are stuck using leafcutter bees, typically buying new bees every year.

(Mark) But these things, you can't move them, and you can't buy them, I mean, you have to raise 'em like kids.

These things are like children and they don't move away.

And so you're sharing these bees.

They're like the closest thing to communism that we have around here because those things just go everywhere.

Okay.

(Mark) They're like our friends.

Yeah, they're just friends.

(Shane) Like in any good friendship, we help alkali bees and they help us, too.

(bees buzzing) But thousands of other bees, species we don't know nearly as well, face the same existential threats.

(wings flapping) These wild, native bees can be even more prolific pollinators than the species we manage.

(wings flapping) But if they're going to survive the Age of Humans, they need allies, too.

(whooshing) (Clay) I had this epiphany that I can make the lives of millions of organisms better.

-Mm.

-And that's not nothing, you know, that counts for something, and that gives me a lot of hope.

(whooshing) (Shane) Clay Bolt is Manager of Pollinator Conservation for the World Wildlife Fund.

But his first love is documenting the lives of insects with his camera.

(Xzibit) I don't need no lights, no cameras All I got is action Only for the money and the fame Paparazzi (Shane) He started focusing on bees in 2012, when a lot of folks were sounding the alarm about honey bee populations.

-(insects chirring) -(birds chirping) (Clay) I set up my camera and imagined myself photographing honey bees for the rest of the day.

But instead, what I photographed were these two small, beautifully colored sweat bees.

Each one was smaller than a grain of rice.

And my mind was blown.

(mellow music) (Shane) Clay fell in love with native bees... (bees buzzing) ...especially bumble bees.

One species captured his imagination: the rusty-patched bumble bee, a species that used to be common across the eastern U.S. (Clay) So, one of the sort of alarming things that happened starting in the mid-'90s is that the rusty-patched disappeared from 90% of its habitat.

To the point where now if you find a rusty-patch, in a lot of its range it's like a celebrity sighting, but this was once an incredibly common bee.

(somber music) (Shane) His quest drew him here to Madison, Wisconsin, where he saw his first rusty-patched in 2014, just a few feet from where we're standing right now.

(bees buzzing) (gasps) (Clay) It's a rusty-patched bumble bee!

-Oh!

-So, this is awesome.

This is a really rare bee.

(Shane) So, how can you tell that it's rusty-patched?

(Clay) Well, it has this-- you can kind of see this rusty band underneath the abdomen there.

But yeah, this is one of the rarest bumble bees -in North America.

-Wow.

(Clay) It's really special to see-- see this here.

(soft music) (Shane) It did feel...special.

(bee buzzing) I could be projecting, but it seemed like even the other bees could tell this one was something a little different.

(wings flapping) -(bee buzzing) -(whooshing) After seeing his first rusty-patched in 2014, Clay put his passion to work.

(bright music) (Clay) I worked with friends to create a documentary.

(camera shutter clicking) I photographed the bee, I started writing articles and that ultimately led, at least in part, to the bee being listed on the Endangered Species Act.

(wings flapping) (Shane) In 2017, the rusty-patched became the first North American bee species to receive federal protection.

But there are 48 other bumble bee species in the U.S., and more than a quarter of those are in serious trouble.

(wings flapping) (Clay) Yeah, so, there's really three main things that are primarily impacting bumble bees.

Habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change is a big factor, actually.

(whooshing) (Shane) It's not just bumble bees.

Researchers estimate that over half of North America's 4,000 bee species are in decline, and almost a quarter are threatened with extinction.

Some of the steepest population declines began in the 1990s.

(bee buzzing) (Clay) And this coincides with the release of a class of systemic pesticides called neonicotinoids, or neonics for short.

(mysterious music) (Shane) Neonics are insecticides that attack insects' nervous systems.

And today, they're just about everywhere.

(Clay) Nearly 100% of field corn that's produced in the United States has neonic-treated seeds.

Soy, wheat, and a single neonic-coated seed has enough active ingredients to kill 80,000 bees.

-Wow.

-So, no wonder we're having these problems with our pollinators.

(Shane) But neonics are one threat in a complicated, fast-changing world.

(wings flapping) How can we make sense of all the challenges wild bees are facing?

(James) We often think about technology, I think, separating us from nature.

So, one of the things that I think is really important, is to think about, how can technology also help us see things that we can't always see?

(banjo music) (Shane) James Crall and I went to grad school together.

That killed John Henry (Shane) And dude plays a mean banjo.

(James) Won't kill me No, it won't kill me (Shane) Here at the University of Wisconsin, he studies threats to wild bees, including pesticides.

(machine rumbling) New agrochemicals are tested on bees before they can be sold in the U.S.

But those tests often involve just one species: the European honey bee.

(James) And honey bees are-- are just wonderfully weird in the world of bees, right?

I mean, I think the right analogy is to think about honey bees as the livestock of the bee world.

(Shane) Pesticides can have different effects on native bees than they do on honey bees.

And our toxicity testing can be pretty simplistic.

What we usually think about is: Does it kill them?

But we know for ourselves, right, alcohol can have negative effects way before it's lethal, right?

It might impair your capacity to do certain things like drive, right?

And those can be really important.

(Shane) Scientists call these "sub-lethal effects."

So, how important are these impacts on bumble bees, and why are some species doing so much worse than others?

(mysterious music) James is looking for answers with some high-tech tools.

(paper rustling) (James) One thing we can do is identify each individual bee with kind of a special little QR code, -like a barcode on their back... -Okay.

(James) ...which basically gives a unique identifier to each bee.

(Shane) With a video camera inside the nest, it's basically Big Brother for bumble bees, which are social but live in smaller colonies than their cousins the honey bees.

(bees buzzing) (James) So, these camera technologies can help us better understand the social life of bees within a colony and how those individual behaviors link to colony outcomes and health, right?

(Shane) How do you make it work... is the question.

Duct tape.

(laughing) That's the short answer to that.

(Shane) James is only half-joking.

Working with cutting-edge technology means constant troubleshooting, especially when you bring it out of the lab and into the field.

(Olivia) This is the camera that allows us to see what's going on in the colony.

(Shane) James's colleague Olivia Bernauer is deploying the high-tech nest boxes on local farms, along with smart cameras that can identify bees when they're out foraging.

(bee buzzing) She's following colonies on low-pesticide farms, like this community garden, and more industrial farms outside of town.

-(whooshing) -(wings flapping) These technologies are helping the team understand how different threats affect bumble bees.

(bees buzzing) (James) So, for example, one of the things that we found is the colony's ability to deal with temperature stress is impaired under the exposure to common pesticides.

(Shane) In other words, bumble bees have trouble coping with heat if they've also been exposed to neonicotinoids.

(bees buzzing) And on a rapidly warming planet, that's a problem.

Because farmers have been told that neonics are safe for beneficial insects like bees.

In fact, it can be hard to find seeds that aren't treated with these pesticides.

(James) There's totally rock-solid evidence now that those levels of exposure that we've decided are environmentally safe are driving declining bee populations.

(bee buzzing) (Shane) So, what's the solution?

(wings flapping) (James) Feeding people is critically important, and we need to do that.

But the real question is how do we best balance that against long-term human well-being impacts of losing biodiversity?

(whooshing) (Shane) The paradox of bee conservation is that we need bees to produce food.

But the way we produce a lot of our food puts bees at risk.

(mellow music) One recent study concluded that inadequate pollination is already worsening our diets, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths a year.

(Alexandra) There's a lot of opportunity for us to build habitats that actually serve both the bees and the humans like significantly better than we've done in the past.

Mm.

(Shane) Alex Harmon-Threatt loves exploring the woods with her growing family.

She studies the ecology and conservation of bees at the University of Illinois.

("People Everyday" by Arrested Development) What's it like working with bees in central Illinois?

(Alexandra) It's actually awesome.

I know that sounds crazy 'cause we're completely surrounded by corn and soy, but it also means that there's a lot of opportunity, right?

(Shane) That opportunity is on full display at a prairie restoration project that Alex helped start in 2018.

What was the level of biodiversity before your experiment began?

(Alexandra) Oh!

I mean, at-- The site was a cornfield, so it was zero.

(laughing) There was exactly one species there and, like, maybe a few pests, right?

Like, there was literally nothing there.

(mellow music) (Shane) Just five years later, Alex's team tallied almost a hundred species of bees there.

(bees buzzing) -Just by not growing corn.

-Just by not growing corn.

Yeah.

(Shane) Industrial corn production is a triple whammy for bees.

It destroys prairie habitat, demands heavy pesticide use, and, by turning over soil and releasing carbon, contributes to climate change.

(Alexandra) If we tackle some of those things, we're really benefiting ourselves, right?

You're building a better life, a better landscape for yourself, for your kids.

(Shane) And a better place to grow food, too.

Because greater bee diversity leads to higher crop yields and better quality.

(Alexandra) If you have good landscapes, you don't need to actually hire honey bees or manage pollinators in any way.

(wings flapping) The pollinators will be there, and they will pollinate your crops.

(wings flapping) (Shane) Bees can also help bring back something a lot of us have forgotten we ever had.

(Alexandra) We went from being hunter-gatherers, to being agrarian, to, like, now I sit at a desk and answer emails all day, right?

Like, people have just moved further and further from any kind of real connection to the land, to the landscapes.

And bees are like the ultimate connectors, right?

Like connecting individual flowers, connecting us to our food resources and food availability, right?

That's so profound.

(laughs) (soft music) There's no question that saving bees is going to take big, systemic change.

We need to rethink how we use and regulate pesticides, how we grow our crops, and how we power our lives.

But this is also an issue where every one of us really can make a difference.

(Clay) The thing that's so great about pollinators is, insects are fairly resilient.

If you give them a pesticide-free environment, if you give them food to eat, if you give them a place to nest, they can rebound fairly quickly.

-And I think that's powerful.

-Yeah.

Bees have some truly passionate advocates... (bees buzzing) ...from beekeepers to scientists, and farmers to conservationists.

(bright music) But you don't have to love bees to understand why we need them.

We've relied on bees for millennia, and Earth's ecosystems have depended on them for eons before our species even existed.

We don't have to ask bees to make our fields bountiful or to make our planet beautiful.

That's just what they do.

So, the least we can do is give them a chance to do their thing.

-(wings flapping) -(bee buzzing) Because a good world for bees is just a good world.

(wings flapping) (hip-hop music) (announcer) This program is available with PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video.