Pollinators in peril: scientists reveal the hidden human health costs of the world’s disappearing bees

A bee busy pollinating a flower. About three-quarters of all agricultural crops rely on pollinator services. Photograph: Daya Ram Bhusal View image in fullscreen A bee busy pollinating a flower. About three-quarters of all agricultural crops rely on pollinator services. Photograph: Daya Ram Bhusal Pollinators in peril: scientists reveal the hidden human health costs of the world’s disappearing bees Crops and flowers rely on them for survival, but wild bees are declining – and crucial nutrients will go missing from our diets as a result There are few ways in and out of Nepal’s Jumla district. The Karnali highway, considered one of the world’s most dangerous roads, provides the only land link, splicing through the Himalayas to connect Jumla’s terraced valleys to the rest of the country. As such, the 120,000 people that live there are almost entirely self-sufficient, with most of them eating and selling what they grow. It’s a tenuous existence, plagued . In recent years, local beekeepers have bemoaned languishing hives and dwindling honey production, observing that roughly half of their bees seem to have vanished over the past decade. These concerns, however, ignore an even more insidious impact. “They saw these bees as valuable for honey, but they didn’t really realise that they were also essential for supporting the production of their crops,” says Thomas Timberlake, an ecologist at the University of York. In a study published last month in the journal Nature, Timberlake and his colleagues set out to quantify just how important the area’s pollinators were to the health of those living in 10 remote Jumla villages. View image in fullscreen Nepal’s isolated Jumla district is particularly vulnerable to pollinator loss, as it already suffers from food insecurity. Photograph: Tom TimberlakeTo do so, they tracked people’s diets, crop yields, and farming income over a one-year period, alongside pollinator interactions with their crops – including the painstaking process of counting pollen granules on fuzzy bee bodies. It turned out that pollinators were directly responsible for more than 20% of inhabitants’ vitamin A, vitamin E and folate intake, and 44% of their farming income. It is the first study of its kind to provide direct evidence of the bond between pollinators and human health. “These types of communities are so vulnerable because they are very isolated geographically. There are not good trade links into there, and they’re very poor,” says Timberlake. “If the yields of local fruits and vegetables decline, they are not going to be able to supplement that .