90% of what we grow—from our food to our clothing—does require pollination from these bees. Relying on other insects that are helpful pollinators isn’t going to work, either, as many of those species—such as moths and hoverflies—are declining substantially as well.
We seem to forget how connected we are to the rest of the world—how our survival, as easy as it largely is for us in the West, isn’t so individual as we’d like to think. Bats are on the decline, as well, due to White Noise Syndrome; their loss leads to an increase in mosquitoes—or, at least, less of the creatures being eaten, which means being more bothered—and, in some cases, more susceptible to disease—for humans.
How many of these “nearly gone” to “completely gone” stories are we going to have to read before we wake up and pay attention to the vast numbers of species that are dwindling away? Sure, people might get choked up about polar bears drowning due to loss of habitat, but they go on their merry little ways, not doing much about it beyond signing the occasional petition.
These things aren’t going to get better on their own. They’re not going to improve until we—the species responsible for the majority of species loss—stand up and act against it. Is extinction always our fault? No, but it usually is in some way. It’s going to be uncomfortable to stand against species and environmental loss, for sure—we’ll lose some of our pleasure comforts, which is actually a good thing. The world doesn’t exist to simply make sure we’re taking hour-long hot showers or driving somewhere all of the time, just for the fun of it. It’s time that we made some sacrifices to help preserve our fellow inhabitants of earth.
In the meantime, there are a few things that humans have been doing to try to help increase the bee population—from planting more native species to attract bees, to refraining from killing them, to donating to conservation efforts, to even raising them—that we can all try to do to help bring back the bees.