10/09/2026
My grandfather H.A.Dade studied bees at Kew Cottages in London…his book… the anatonmy of the honey bee… still referenced today by apiarists.
Told me as I cut out blotters for his Petri dishes….
When bees stop pollinating …
Food will end very shortly thereafter.
Bees haven’t literally been given an official title as the “most important species on Earth,” but their importance to life on this planet is difficult to overstate.
Around 75% of the world’s major food crop types depend at least partly on animal pollination, and pollinators influence roughly 35% of global crop production by volume. That includes many fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, coffee and cocoa.
Their role goes far beyond our food. About 87.5% of flowering plant species are pollinated by animals, with bees among the most important contributors. Those plants then provide food and habitat for countless insects, birds and mammals.
And “bees” doesn’t just mean the familiar honeybee. There are more than 25,000 bee species, most of them wild, alongside butterflies, moths, beetles, flies, birds and bats that also perform vital pollination work.
Many pollinators are under growing pressure from habitat loss, intensive agriculture, pesticides, invasive species, disease and climate change. Losing them wouldn’t instantly eliminate human food—we’d still have wind-pollinated and self-pollinating staples such as wheat and rice—but our diets would become dramatically less diverse and many nutritious foods would become scarcer and more expensive.
Something weighing a fraction of a gram can help hold together entire ecosystems. That’s a pretty good reminder that importance in nature has very little to do with size.
