Bee hatred is pervasive in our current culture, but things weren’t always like this. Bees have shared a deep history with the human race, and now is their time of need.

According to a study by WSU, 2025 could see a 60-70% loss of all commercial honey bees. This is up from 40-50% in the last decade, which was still unimaginably concerning for America’s farmers. In addition to honey bees, native bee populations too are plummeting, all of this due to the terrifying mix of herbicides, pesticides, pollution, and climate change. This is catastrophic to farmers and environmentalists alike, but still, bee hatred is pervasive in our culture. Things weren’t always like this. Our relationship is far deeper than most imagine. The roots of humanity have forever been intertwined with yellow and black critters, and this evolutionary relationship can continue to progress the human race.

But before we begin, I’d like to make clear just how important pollinating efforts are. When making the case to bee-haters, it’s worth noting that insects’ free labor makes up over $57 billion of the United States’ annual economy. Bees spend their lives laboring as vehicles chauffeuring a flowering plant’s male sex cells to awaiting female flowers. Farms without this labor must use a human hand-pollination process, which is labor and time intensive. Vanilla, for example, is naturally pollinated by the Melipona Bee, which resides only in its natural habitat in Mexico. So commercial vanilla farmers outside of Mexico in Tahiti, Hawaii, Indonesia, Madagascar, and Papua New Guinea, require precarious hand pollination methods, with the vanilla orchid only flowering for a few hours each year. 

So our relationship may have started with a mutual appreciation for agriculture, 12,000 years ago, but it became personal when humans got our first taste of what bees make. Our ancestors in Spain foraged for that syrup, with painted depictions of their search dating back 8000 years. Honey-producing bees decompose complex sucrose into our simple favorites: glucose and fructose. This tastes so good that King Tut himself was buried with the stuff. Honey has superpowers beyond taste: the sugar holds trace amounts of acids, weaponizing itself against microbial invasions. This makes honey such an effective preservative that the Vedda people of Ceylon used the liquid to preserve meat in hollowed-out trees. 

Along with the main attraction comes the material constructing its hexagonal vessel: beeswax. It is water resistant, pliable, durable, and good for lubricants and adhesives, as well as varnish, polish, and cosmetics, with a slow burn that has illuminated cathedrals for centuries. But beeswax's most overlooked, most unexpected application is in its use in metalworking. Molds for copper and bronze used the lost-wax method: beeswax designs were placed in a mold and melted, leaving the desired shape to be filled by the valuable metal. Bees were directly responsible for brass figures small and large in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, such as Da Vinci’s Horse and Rider; 1508-1511. 

So what now? Do we know all their tricks, or are there more in the book? Well, in 1961, studies began to show the future of how bees will continue to push forward humanity. Scientists fed honey bees sugar water while exposing them to specific odors, thereby training them to seek out that odor. Tests show that honey bees may be employable in hunting landmines, bombs, tuberculosis, and COVID-19. Scientists are capitalizing on the super-smellers to remove undiscovered land mines, which they do with 80% accuracy. In areas without strong medical infrastructure, bees can be used to detect the first stages of diabetes or cancer tumors.

Humans and bees have benefited from each other's existence for thousands of years, perhaps as man’s (second) best friend. So much more than pollination: the labor of bees has upheld cultures and progressed society. And now, after all they’ve given us, we are turning a blind eye during their time of need. And the solution is an easy one: embrace the colorful flowers in the lawn, skip the chemicals and the mower, and watch those beautiful yellow bugs take flight.