Human beekeeping has been traced back to 7000 BCE

Bees are crucial for pollination and food security

When animals and insects pick up the pollen of flowers and spread it, they allow plants, including many food crops, to reproduce. The most common pollinator is the bee, but bees are at risk from pollution and pesticides.

One-third of the world’s food supply relies on pollinators

By supporting crop production and farmland ecosystems, these animals contribute over $200B to the global economy. A 3% to 5% decrease in this production may result in as many as 427,000 deaths due to nutritional deficiencies.

Millions of honeybees are hauled yearly across the US to help pollinate farms

As indigenous pollinator populations dwindle, farmers increasingly rely on commercial honeybees, which truckers often transport during cooler periods to prevent die-off from overheating. Pollinating all the almond trees in California requires 85% to 90% of all honeybees available to pollinate in the country.

Over 1,500 insect species pollinate plants in the UK

These insects—including bumblebees, moths, butterflies, and beetles—play a crucial role in the reproduction of flowering plants, also known as angiosperms. They do so by transferring pollen from the male reproductive organ—the anther—to the female one—the stigma—which enables the plant to produce fruit.

South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are most at risk from falling pollinator numbers

Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that declines in pollinator populations would lead to higher rates of nutritional deficiencies, particularly in developing nations. Nations with large populations, such as China and India, would also be significantly impacted.

Native, wild bees are at much greater risk of extinction than honey bees

It is estimated that there are more honey bees, which often compete with native bees for resources, on the planet than at any point in human history. Meanwhile, 40% of invertebrate pollinator species, including wild bees and butterflies, face extinction in the coming decades.

Agricultural intensification has accelerated declines in pollinator populations

The practice of using farmland more frequently to increase its yield increases the number of residual pesticides and decreases botanical biodiversity. These processes tend to decrease carrying capacity for pollinators by eliminating food sources and nesting habitats.

Coevolution of pollinators and flowering plants diversified both

The first pollinators were beetles, which consumed pollen before flowering plants existed. Over time, plants evolved to attract more insects and improve the uptake of pollen, while insects adapted their biology to enhance the capture of pollen, such as developing specialized mouthparts.

In Amsterdam, planting organic flowers has increased native bee diversity by 45%

The citywide effort is an example of rethinking conventional agricultural methods, which rely on monocropping and heavy chemical use. Cover crops—plants grown to suppress weeds, prevent erosion, and attract pollinators rather than to be harvested—have also shown environmental benefits, despite not being sold for profit.

Less than 0.1% of the approximately 20,000 known bee species make honey

The majority of honeybee species originate in South and Southeast Asia, with the largest—Apis laboriosa—found almost exclusively in the Himalayas. The smallest is the black dwarf honeybee, Apis andreniformis, which inhabits tropical and subtropical regions of the continent.

Bees are more likely to remember a flower if its nectar contains caffeine

Plants want pollinators to keep coming back, so the finding suggests that some plants, such as Citrus and Coffea species, have evolved to include caffeine in their nectar. Researchers suggest the findings could help develop methods to reinvigorate pollinator populations.

Swarms of mechanical bees may one day support natural pollination

Engineers are racing to create tiny robot bees that can be programmed to mimic natural bee behavior, helping in specific scenarios such as indoor farming and space agriculture. Battery life challenges may be solved by having these robots accompanied by a nearby "mother" drone power supply.

Butterfly populations have declined by 22% from 2000 to 2020

Research suggests that one in every five butterflies is lost due to pesticide use, habitat loss, and climate change. Playing a vital role in pollination, their declining populations threaten plant reproduction and the health of ecosystems.

Explore guides on pollinator-friendly plants native to where you live

Pollinators have co-evolved alongside specific plants from their natural habitat and see their populations increase in environments with these native flora. This collection offers recommendations for regional plants that can provide nectar and pollen, serve as host plants for caterpillars, and offer nest sites for specialist bees.

Bees evolved from meat-eating wasps that became vegetarian

After flowering plants first appeared approximately 140 million years ago, some wasp diets would have changed as they consumed pollen-coated insects that would visit these plants. Bees that branched from these wasp species also developed long tongues to slurp nectar and ultraviolet vision to identify flower patterns unseen by humans.

US honeybee colony loss remains a concern, despite rebounding from the mid-2000s CCD

In the winter of 2006-07, worker honeybees began mysteriously disappearing from hives—a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder—triggering the loss of as many as 90% of hives. The lack of dead bees found near hives and the declining prevalence of CCD since then have made finding a single cause challenging.

Appropriate timing of land management techniques can help support pollinators

The mowing, grazing, and burning practices used to maintain land should be tailored to the life cycles and needs of native pollinators, particularly those of rare or endangered species. For example, mowing is recommended in the fall or winter when flowers are not in bloom.

The ancient crops we've forgotten how to grow

Roughly half of all world calories today stem from maize, wheat, and rice. But for most of history, plants were domesticated in highly local places. This video dives into the scientists learning about crops no longer highly in use that once fueled entire civilizations in North America. Some forgotten crops include pitseed goosefoot, maygrass, and sumpweed.

Flowers have been around for 123 million years

Fossilized pollen grains reveal that flowering plants have existed on Earth for 123 million years, and their emergence considerably enriched the planet's biological diversity. They may also have been more widespread than initially thought—prior assumptions were that the eudicots, the first flowering plants, appeared 121 million years ago.

Why physiology and genetics prevent king bees from existing

The mating process is fatal to male honey bees, as their endophallus detaches from their bodies and remains temporarily within the queen. Because fertilized honey bee eggs develop into female bees, if a male somehow did survive and become king, his line of succession would also abruptly end.

More than 2 billion people across the globe include bugs in their diets

Entomophagy is the practice of eating insects. It has been around for millennia. Bugs are nutritious and, in some places, considered a delicacy.

How we helped make Aedes aegypti mosquitoes such a problem

Mosquito genome sequencing data suggests that Aedes aegypti mosquitoes first started specializing on human blood around 5,000 years ago—when climates shifted and humans started domesticating plants in Africa and stored large amounts of water that may have attracted the bugs.

Food allergies were first documented more than 4,000 years ago

Although food allergies are on the rise in modern times, they have been documented in written records for thousands of years. More than 3,000 years ago, Chinese emperors advised patients to avoid certain foods, and Hippocrates noted in his work that food could cause serious harm to certain individuals, and even lead to death.

More than 100 types of beer are produced around the world

Beer dates back to ancient times, and since then, the fermented drink has taken on many different styles around the globe, depending on the grain and ingredients used. See how pilsners, IPAs, Sours, and other types evolved from the drink's early history.

'The bounty of nature is also one of the deep needs of man.'

- Lady Bird Johnson (1912-2007)

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

Scientists have struggled to pin down Ebola's natural reservoir species for decades, but the available evidence suggests that it's very likely fruit and insect-eating bats found in Africa.

Hookworm infection, though risky, may help fight certain autoimmune conditions by tamping down the immune system's inflammatory response.

See how each of the more than two million known species relates to each other—and to common ancestors—in this zoomable tree of life.

Before humans, the Soviet Union and the United States sent animals—including apes, dogs, and cats—to space during the Space Race.

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

Poison ivy is in the same family as mangoes, cashews, and pistachios—and they all produce oily urushiol in their raw, unprocessed state—but they are typically prepared in ways to avoid causing human discomfort.

Indefinite cloning of some endangered species may not sustain their longevity because cloning success rates decrease as genetic mutations accumulate.

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

Volcanic activity may have triggered the Black Death by spewing gases that led to crop failures in Europe, thus forcing the import of grain ships with plague-infested fleas.

Apeirophobia is an overwhelming fear of living forever, perhaps stemming from the brain's inability to conceptualize an infinite life.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

The US dollar is the most widely circulated currency in the world, and is involved in nearly 90% of global transactions

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

Fish populations in the Great Barrier Reef have increased after installing waterproof speakers on the ocean floor that played recordings of sounds from healthy coral reefs.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

While the sun's gravity keeps the planets in orbit, their gravity also pulls on the sun, causing it and everything else in the solar system to orbit around a mutual balance point called the barycenter—the true center of the solar system.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight