Why Are Bees Important? An Interactive Explainer

Why are bees important? The short answer

Bees are important because they pollinate. As a bee visits flowers to collect nectar and pollen for food, pollen sticks to its fuzzy body and gets carried to the next flower. That delivery lets plants make fruit and seeds.⁴¹⁴ Around the world, about three out of four leading kinds of food crops get at least some benefit from animal pollinators, and crops that depend on pollinators make up about 35% of global crop production by volume.²²¹¹ (The USDA sums this up as about one in three bites of food, a rough rule of thumb.)¹ Bees are the most important of those pollinators, and the plants they keep going also feed and shelter a huge range of wildlife.¹⁴

bee collects food → pollen hitches a ride → next flower → seeds + fruit → food for us and for wildlife

How the pollen gets from one flower to the next is a story of its own: see how pollination works. And for what honeybees do with all that nectar, see how bees make honey. This page is about why it all matters, the many kinds of bee, and what's really threatening them.

Bees don't pollinate on purpose

A bee isn't trying to help. It visits flowers to gather food for itself and its young: sugary nectar for energy, and protein-rich pollen to feed its larvae.⁴¹⁵ Its body is covered in branched hairs, so pollen sticks to it like dust on a sweater. At the next flower of the same kind, some of that pollen rubs off, and the plant can make seeds. It's a deal that has worked for millions of years: bees and flowering plants evolved together, and without the bees they coevolved with, many plants would struggle to reproduce.¹⁴¹⁸

Why are bees important to humans? Our food

Western honeybees alone pollinate about $15 billion worth of US crops each year, including more than 130 kinds of fruits, nuts and vegetables.²³ Scientists who compared harvests with and without pollinators sorted crops into groups by how much they depend on animals like bees:¹¹¹²

Crop	Harvest without animal pollinators	Dependence
Pumpkins, squash, watermelon	falls by 90% or more	essential
Apples, almonds, cherries, blueberries, cucumbers, peaches, pears	falls by 40–90%	high
Strawberries	falls by 10–40%	modest
Wheat, corn, rice	little or no change (wind- or self-pollinated)²⁵	none

That table shows both sides of the story. The staple grains that supply most of the world's calories don't need bees.¹¹ So staple grains would still grow without bees, but harvests of many fruits, nuts and vegetables, which supply a lot of our vitamins and minerals, would shrink. Food would likely become less varied, less nutritious and more expensive.¹¹¹⁴

Almonds show how much farms rely on bees. They depend almost completely on honeybees, and California's almond orchards draw a large share of all managed honeybee colonies in the US (estimates range from about three-quarters to nearly 88%).¹⁶ The hives are trucked in from all over the country during a short window in January and February,³ which works out to around two million colonies every year.²³

Why are bees important to the environment?

About three-quarters of the world's flowering plants depend on animal pollinators to reproduce.¹ When bees pollinate wildflowers, shrubs and trees, those plants make the seeds, berries and leaves that feed birds, mammals and insects, and give them shelter. Bees are also food themselves for birds, spiders and other animals. If bees decline, the effects ripple through the whole food web.¹⁴

Honeybees are just one of about 20,000 kinds of bee

The world has about 20,000 bee species,¹⁰¹⁸ and the United States alone has more than 4,000 native species.⁴ The honeybee we all picture isn't one of them: it isn't native to America. European colonists brought honeybees over in the 1500s and 1600s.²³

Most bees live alone. Only a few kinds, such as honeybees, bumblebees and some sweat bees, live in colonies. Most are solitary, and most dig their nest tunnels in sunny patches of bare ground. Others nest in old beetle holes in dead wood, and mason bees build with mud.⁴
Bumblebees buzz-pollinate. Tomato and blueberry flowers release their pollen only through tiny pores in their anthers. A bumblebee grabs the flower and vibrates its flight muscles to shake the pollen out.¹⁵ Honeybees can't do this,¹⁹ which is why bumblebees are used to pollinate greenhouse tomatoes and peppers.⁷
Squash bees are native solitary bees that nest underground and specialise in pumpkins, squash and gourds. They helped Indigenous peoples across the Americas grow squash long before honeybees arrived.⁶
Blue orchard bees are expert cherry pollinators. In a four-year USDA trial, a cherry orchard produced more than twice as much fruit with blue orchard bees as with honeybees.⁷

Are bees going extinct?

The honest answer depends on which bees you mean.

Honeybees: not going extinct, but under pressure. Honeybees are managed by beekeepers, a bit like livestock. Beekeepers lose a large share of their colonies every year: for example, winter losses were 30.5% in 2012–13 and 23.2% in 2013–14.⁷ Their single biggest problem is the varroa mite, a parasite from Asia that has killed huge numbers of colonies since it reached the US in 1987.³ But beekeepers split hives and raise new colonies to replace their losses, so the total number of US honeybee colonies has stayed fairly steady (USDA counted 2.82 million in January 2015 and 2.59 million in January 2016, for operations with five or more colonies).¹⁷¹⁹ Colony Collapse Disorder, the mystery that made headlines after 2006, has been reported less and less since 2010.³

Wild bees: some are in real trouble. Nobody replaces lost wild bees. Declines of wild pollinators have been confirmed in North America and north-western Europe.⁹¹⁰ More than a quarter of North America's bumblebee species are at risk of extinction,¹³ and the rusty patched bumble bee, once common across the eastern US and upper Midwest, was listed as federally endangered in 2017.⁸

What is threatening bees?

Loss of habitat: fewer flowers to feed on and fewer places to nest, as land is built on or farmed intensively.³¹⁰
Pesticides: including neonicotinoid insecticides, which harmed wild bees in field studies.¹⁰
Parasites and disease: varroa mites in honeybees, and a disease brought in from elsewhere that is linked to the rusty patched bumble bee's decline.³⁸
Climate change: it shifts when flowers bloom and brings more extreme weather.⁸¹⁰

The key idea is that these threats stack up. USDA scientists note that bees might survive many of these problems one at a time, but combinations of them can overwhelm a colony.³ (The bee health bar in the video is a simple illustration of that idea, not a measurement.)

How can you help bees?

A bee needs two things: food (pollen and nectar) and a place to nest.⁴ You can help with both, even on a balcony or in a small yard:

Plant native flowers in clumps, choosing a mix that blooms from spring to fall. Native plants suit your local climate, soil and bees. Skip fancy hybrids that have had their pollen and nectar bred out.⁵
Leave some bare, sunny soil for ground-nesting bees,⁴ and let a corner grow wild. Mowing less often (every two to three weeks) lets clover and other small flowers bloom, and patchy, less-perfect lawns leave room for nest sites.²¹
Keep dead wood, such as an old log or a dead branch (where it's safe), for bees that nest in wood.⁵
Avoid pesticides. Skipping them is the simplest way to keep bees safe.⁵
Spread the word. Grow flowers, provide nest sites, avoid pesticides and tell others: that's the Xerces Society's pollinator pledge.¹³

Worried about stings? Most bees are gentle. Male bees can't sting at all, and many solitary bees rarely sting or can't pierce skin.¹⁴ Bees usually sting only when they feel in danger,²⁰ so don't swat at them: stay calm and slowly walk away if you need to. If you get stung, or you know you're allergic, tell a grown-up right away; an allergic reaction needs treatment straight away.²⁴

Common misconceptions

"Bees are going extinct." Honeybee colonies are managed and have held fairly steady in number. The real concern is some wild species, like the endangered rusty patched bumble bee.⁸¹⁷

"Without bees, we'd all starve." Wheat, rice and corn don't need animal pollinators. We'd likely lose variety and nutrition (fruit, nuts, vegetables), not our staple grains.¹¹

"Honeybees are the only bees that matter." Native bees are often better at particular crops, like bumblebees with tomatoes, squash bees with squash and orchard bees with cherries.⁶⁷

"All bees live in hives and make honey." Most bees live alone, and many nest in the ground.⁴

"Bees are out to sting you." Most bees only sting when threatened, and males can't sting at all.¹⁴

FAQ

Why are bees important in simple words?

Bees carry pollen from flower to flower while they collect food. That lets plants make fruit and seeds. Many of the fruits, nuts and vegetables we eat, and many wild plants that feed other animals, depend on that delivery.

What would happen if bees went extinct?

Staple grains would still grow: wheat and rice mostly pollinate themselves, and corn is wind-pollinated. But crops like pumpkins, apples, almonds, cherries and blueberries would produce far less, so food would become less varied, less nutritious and more expensive. Many wild plants would also struggle to reproduce, which would affect the animals that rely on them.

Are bees endangered?

Honeybees are not endangered: they are managed by beekeepers, who replace the colonies they lose, so US colony numbers have stayed fairly steady. Some wild bees are in real trouble, though. More than a quarter of North American bumblebee species are at risk of extinction, and the rusty patched bumble bee was listed as endangered in 2017.

Which foods depend most on animal pollinators?

Crops that depend most on animal pollinators include pumpkins, squash and watermelon (harvests fall 90% or more without them), and apples, almonds, cherries, blueberries, cucumbers, peaches and pears (40 to 90%). Strawberries drop less. Wheat, corn and rice don't need animal pollinators.

Do all bees make honey and live in hives?

No. Only a few kinds of bee make honey. Most of the roughly 20,000 bee species live alone, and many dig small nests in bare, sunny ground or use holes in dead wood.

Do all bees sting?

Male bees can't sting at all, and many solitary bees rarely sting or can't pierce human skin. Most bees only sting when they feel threatened, so if a bee comes near, stay calm and let it go about its work. If you get stung, or you're allergic, tell a grown-up right away.

How can I help bees?

Plant clumps of native flowers so something blooms from spring to fall, leave some bare sunny soil and an unmowed wild corner, keep dead wood for bees that nest in it, and avoid pesticides.

Why are bees important?

Remove the bees, meet the natives, build a bee garden

Play in the rooftop garden!

Which foods need bees?

Pollinator-dependent foods

Bee food or wind food?

Send the bee on its rounds

The accidental delivery

Fly the bee

Take the bees away

Remove the pollinators

If bees went away

Meet the bees

Native bee specialists

Meet the bees

Stack the threats

Combined stressors

Build a bee garden

Design pollinator habitat

Build a bee garden