It’s Not Just About the Bees – We Need to Rethink Our Relationship with Wild Ecosystems as a Whole

For a while now, the focus on bees as a flagship for conservation has irked me somewhat.

Every time I see an Instagram or Threads post about 'saving the bees', I exhale in slight exasperation.

It's not because I dislike the bees. I actually feel as warm and fuzzy towards them as the next person.

Whenever I see one buzzing close beside me, I smile and often take a picture, especially if it's on a wild plant. As evidence, see exhibit A below: a photo of a bee on a dandelion that I took over ten years ago. One of my favourites.

So, with that disclaimer out of the way, the main point of this post is to explore why I think the emphasis on bees as a focal point for conservation creates a false narrative. It's just too simplistic.

It elevates one species above others in terms of importance when we need to think more holistically about habitats and ecosystems.

So, last week, I posted a thread about it. It would seem I'm not the only one who shares the sentiment, as it got over 1,000 likes and almost 80 reposts.

Clearly, it struck a nerve with others too. So, I decided to delve into the issue in a bit more detail below.

The focus on commercial honey bees

There has without a doubt been a decrease in pollinating insects in recent years. This is well documented, and is as a result of habitat destruction, land use management (grazing, fertilizers and crop monoculture of farming) and wildspread pesticide use.

Honeybees in particular have become a focal point for conservation charities, the media, and even the UK Government. What is interesting though, is that are largely domesticated in the UK (not wild), and they are not endangered. In fact, their global numbers have increased steadily since the UN started monitoring in the1960s.

Known as the Western or European honeybee (Apis mellifera ), they are farmed for honey, wax and pollinating crops. Academics from Cambridge University have even argued that they should be considered more like livestock than wildlife:

“The crisis in global pollinator decline has been associated with one species above all, the western honeybee. Yet this is one of the few pollinator species that is continually replenished through breeding and agriculture...Saving the honeybee does not help wildlife. Western honeybees are a commercially managed species that can actually have negative effects on their immediate environment through the massive numbers in which they are introduced." -- Dr Jonas Geldmann from Cambridge University’s Department of Zoology

While honeybees they make up only 0.03% of all bee species (with bumblebees and solitary bees making up 99% of all bee species globally), they live in very large colonies with up to 70,000 individuals, so can quickly become dominant in a landscape (see article on Food Unfolded).

While the honeybee plays a really important role in crop pollination, it can carry pathogens which can be passed on to wild pollinators, and it also ends up competing with them for resources.

How important is the honey bee for pollination?

Roughly three quarters of the world’s main food crops depend on pollination from insects, birds and mamals.

A 2024 meta study found that found that honey bees and wild insects contribute roughly equal amounts to crop yields worldwide, having similar average flower visitation rates and producing similar increases in yield per visit. 

So, honeybees clearly do contribute more than any other species, but they don't do it all. There are some plants they simply cannot pollinate (such as tomatoes!), which depend on wild insects for pollination. There is also some evidence that wild insect pollinators may increase crop yields compared with honey bees.

Academics are increasingly pointing out the risk of focusing on one species in particular as it leaves our food sources very vulnerable to be so reliant on one species, and that the focus on bees has meant that non-bee pollinators have been largely overlooked.

Beyond bees - thinking holistically about ecosystems

While it could be argued that "saving the bees" would also mean fixing the problems that all pollinators face (like the aforementioned habitat loss, land management issues and pesticides), I think in some ways the focus on bees as the most urgent species to save lets us avoid the broader issue of ecosystem collapse.

Earlier this year, a UK government research and analysis paper found that:

“Ecosystem degradation is occurring across all regions. Every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse (irreversible loss of function beyond repair)”. - UK Government, 2026

It also outlined the expected repercussions of this: 

• Geopolitical instability

• Economic insecurity

• Conflict

• Migration

• Increased inter-state competition for resources

• Water insecurity

• Severely reduced crop yields

• A global reduction in arable land

• Fisheries collapse

• Changes to global weather patterns

• Release of trapped carbon exacerbating climate change

• Novel zoonotic diseases

• Loss of pharmaceutical resources

This makes quite bleak reading.

So, it's clearly not just the bees we need to save, we need to allow the natural world to thrive again.

I've written before about why I believe rewilding is a big part of the answer, particularly given how far behind the government is on its commitments to preserve 30% of UK land for nature by 2030.

Currently England is only at a measely 7%,although the government has identified a further 25% of land with the potential to contribute).

Paradigm shift - a question of relating

The other issue with the 'save the bees' focal point is that I think that it lets us off the hook when it comes to asking bigger, more difficult questions about how we relate to the wild world we ultimately belong to but try so desperately to control.

In a week when the UN has outlined that we will definitely surpass the target to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, it is clear that targets have not been enough to instigate the kind of change we need to see.

And I think that's because we need to change how we see the world and our place in it. We need a new narrative, one that moves us on from seeing ourselves as separate from nature to intrinsically part of it. As Sharon Blackie puts it, we need to bring back a type of enchantment that is founded on “a sense of fully participating in a living world – a feeling of belonging rather than separation.”

Perhaps then, instead of asking only how we can save the bees, we should also be asking how we can learn to live as part of the living world again: moving away from a relationship defined by taking, towards one rooted in reciprocity, respect and reverence for the natural world of which we are a part.