
WIRED also has a great article; [*You're Worrying About The Wrong Bees*:](https://www.wired.com/2015/04/youre-worrying-wrong-bees/)


&gt;Honey bees will be fine. They are a globally distributed, domesticated animal. Apis mellifera will not go extinct, and the species is not remotely threatened with extinction.

&gt;**The bees you should be concerned about are the 3,999 other bee species living in North America, most of which are solitary, stingless, ground-nesting bees you've never heard of.** Incredible losses in native bee diversity are already happening. 50 percent of Midwestern native bee species disappeared from their historic ranges in the last 100 years. Four of our bumblebee species declined 96 percent in the last 20 years, and three species are believed to already be extinct. 

&gt;The evidence is clear that many native wild pollinators are declining. That wouldn't be a big deal, if commercial honeybees could pick up the slack. They can't.

&gt;Managed honey bee colonies supplement the work of natural wild pollinators, not the other way around. In a study of 41 different crop systems worldwide, honeybees only increased yield in 14 percent of the crops. Who did all the pollination? Native bees and other insects.

&gt;A whole host of little blueberry bees, squash bees, and orchard bees co-evolved with many of our fruits and vegetables. It makes sense they would be good at pollination. In watermelons, native bees do 90 percent of the pollination. Native bees improve fruit production in apples. Native bee pollination creates twice as much fruit as honey bees in blueberries. In tomatoes, native bee species increase fruit production significantly. Honey bees aren't physically big enough to successfully pollinate tomatoes; it takes a burly bumble bee to do the job. In a lot of crops, specialist pollinators do a better job than generalist honey bees.