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This is our life with bees,
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and this is our life without bees.
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Bees are the most important pollinators
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of our fruits and vegetables and flowers
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and crops like alfalfa hay that feed our farm animals.
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More than one third of the world's crop production
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is dependent on bee pollination.
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But the ironic thing is that bees are not out there
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pollinating our food intentionally.
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They're out there because they need to eat.
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Bees get all of the protein they need in their diet
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from pollen
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and all of the carbohydrates they need from nectar.
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They're flower-feeders,
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and as they move from flower to flower,
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basically on a shopping trip at the local floral mart,
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they end up providing this valuable pollination service.
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In parts of the world where there are no bees,
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or where they plant varieties that are not attractive to bees,
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people are paid to do the business of pollination by hand.
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These people are moving pollen from flower to flower
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with a paintbrush.
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Now this business of hand pollination
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is actually not that uncommon.
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Tomato growers often pollinate their tomato flowers
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with a hand-held vibrator.
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Now this one's the tomato tickler. (Laughter)
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Now this is because the pollen within a tomato flower
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is held very securely within
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the male part of the flower, the anther,
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and the only way to release this pollen is to vibrate it.
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So bumblebees are one of the few kinds of bees in the world
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that are able to hold onto the flower and vibrate it,
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and they do this by shaking their flight muscles
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at a frequency similar to the musical note C.
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So they vibrate the flower, they sonicate it,
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and that releases the pollen in this efficient swoosh,
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and the pollen gathers all over the fuzzy bee's body,
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and she takes it home as food.
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Tomato growers now put bumblebee colonies
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inside the greenhouse to pollinate the tomatoes
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because they get much more efficient pollination
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when it's done naturally
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and they get better quality tomatoes.
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So there's other, maybe more personal reasons,
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to care about bees.
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There's over 20,000 species of bees in the world,
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and they're absolutely gorgeous.
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These bees spend the majority of their life cycle
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hidden in the ground or within a hollow stem
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and very few of these beautiful species
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have evolved highly social behavior like honeybees.
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Now honeybees tend to be the charismatic representative
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for the other 19,900-plus species
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because there's something about honeybees
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that draws people into their world.
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Humans have been drawn to honeybees
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since early recorded history,
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mostly to harvest their honey,
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which is an amazing natural sweetener.
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I got drawn into the honeybee world
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completely by a fluke.
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I was 18 years old and bored,
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and I picked up a book in the library on bees
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and I spent the night reading it.
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I had never thought about insects
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living in complex societies.
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It was like the best of science fiction come true.
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And even stranger, there were these people,
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these beekeepers, that loved their bees like they were family,
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and when I put down the book, I knew I had to see this for myself.
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So I went to work for a commercial beekeeper,
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a family that owned 2,000 hives of bees in New Mexico.
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And I was permanently hooked.
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Honeybees can be considered a super-organism,
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where the colony is the organism
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and it's comprised of 40,000 to 50,000
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individual bee organisms.
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Now this society has no central authority.
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Nobody's in charge.
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So how they come to collective decisions,
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and how they allocate their tasks and divide their labor,
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how they communicate where the flowers are,
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all of their collective social behaviors are mindblowing.
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My personal favorite, and one that I've studied for many years,
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is their system of healthcare.
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So bees have social healthcare.
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So in my lab, we study how bees keep themselves healthy.
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For example, we study hygiene,
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where some bees are able to locate and weed out
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sick individuals from the nest, from the colony,
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and it keeps the colony healthy.
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And more recently, we've been studying resins
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that bees collect from plants.
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So bees fly to some plants and they scrape
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these very, very sticky resins off the leaves,
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and they take them back to the nest
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where they cement them into the nest architecture
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where we call it propolis.
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We've found that propolis is a natural disinfectant.
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It's a natural antibiotic.
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It kills off bacteria and molds and other germs
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within the colony,
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and so it bolsters the colony health and their social immunity.
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Humans have known about the power of propolis
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since biblical times.
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We've been harvesting propolis out of bee colonies
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for human medicine,
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but we didn't know how good it was for the bees.
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So honeybees have these remarkable natural defenses
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that have kept them healthy and thriving
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for over 50 million years.
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So seven years ago, when honeybee colonies
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were reported to be dying en masse,
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first in the United States,
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it was clear that there was something really, really wrong.
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In our collective conscience, in a really primal way,
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we know we can't afford to lose bees.
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So what's going on?
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Bees are dying from multiple and interacting causes,
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and I'll go through each of these.
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The bottom line is,
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bees dying reflects a flowerless landscape
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and a dysfunctional food system.
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Now we have the best data on honeybees,
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so I'll use them as an example.
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In the United States, bees in fact have been
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in decline since World War II.
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We have half the number of managed hives
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in the United States now compared to 1945.
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We're down to about two million hives of bees, we think.
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And the reason is, after World War II,
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we changed our farming practices.
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We stopped planting cover crops.
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We stopped planting clover and alfalfa,
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which are natural fertilizers that fix nitrogen in the soil,
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and instead we started using synthetic fertilizers.
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Clover and alfalfa are highly nutritious food plants for bees.
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And after World War II, we started using herbicides
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to kill off the weeds in our farms.
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Many of these weeds are flowering plants
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that bees require for their survival.
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And we started growing larger and larger crop monocultures.
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Now we talk about food deserts,
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places in our cities, neighborhoods that have no grocery stores.
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The very farms that used to sustain bees
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are now agricultural food deserts,
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dominated by one or two plant species
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like corn and soybeans.
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Since World War II, we have been systematically
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eliminating many of the flowering plants
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that bees need for their survival.
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And these monocultures extend even to crops
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that are good for bees, like almonds.
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Fifty years ago, beekeepers would take a few colonies,
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hives of bees into the almond orchards, for pollination,
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and also because the pollen in an almond blossom
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is really high in protein. It's really good for bees.
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Now, the scale of almond monoculture
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demands that most of our nation's bees,
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over 1.5 million hives of bees,
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be transported across the nation
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to pollinate this one crop.
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And they're trucked in in semi-loads,
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and they must be trucked out,
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because after bloom, the almond orchards
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are a vast and flowerless landscape.
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Bees have been dying over the last 50 years,
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and we're planting more crops that need them.
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There has been a 300 percent increase in crop production
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that requires bee pollination.
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And then there's pesticides.
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After World War II, we started using pesticides
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on a large scale, and this became necessary
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because of the monocultures that put out a feast
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for crop pests.
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Recently, researchers from Penn State University
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have started looking at the pesticide residue
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in the loads of pollen that bees carry home as food,
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and they've found that every batch of pollen
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that a honeybee collects
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has at least six detectable pesticides in it,
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and this includes every class of insecticides,
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herbicides, fungicides,
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and even inert and unlabeled ingredients
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that are part of the pesticide formulation
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that can be more toxic than the active ingredient.
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This small bee is holding up a large mirror.
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How much is it going to take to contaminate humans?
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One of these class of insecticides,
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the neonicontinoids,
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is making headlines around the world right now.
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You've probably heard about it.
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This is a new class of insecticides.
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It moves through the plant so that a crop pest,
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a leaf-eating insect,
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would take a bite of the plant
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and get a lethal dose and die.
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If one of these neonics, we call them,
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is applied in a high concentration,
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such as in this ground application,
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enough of the compound moves through the plant
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and gets into the pollen and the nectar,
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where a bee can consume, in this case,
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a high dose of this neurotoxin
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that makes the bee twitch and die.
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In most agricultural settings, on most of our farms,
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it's only the seed that's coated with the insecticide,
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and so a smaller concentration moves through the plant
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and gets into the pollen and nectar,
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and if a bee consumes this lower dose,
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either nothing happens
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or the bee becomes intoxicated and disoriented
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and she may not find her way home.
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And on top of everything else, bees have
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their own set of diseases and parasites.
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Public enemy number one for bees is this thing.
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It's called varroa destructor.
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It's aptly named.
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It's this big, blood-sucking parasite
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that compromises the bee's immune system
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and circulates viruses.
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Let me put this all together for you.
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I don't know what it feels like to a bee
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to have a big, bloodsucking parasite running around on it,
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and I don't know what it feels like to a bee to have a virus,
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but I do know what it feels like when I have a virus, the flu,
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and I know how difficult it is for me to get
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to the grocery store to get good nutrition.
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But what if I lived in a food desert?
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And what if I had to travel a long distance
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to get to the grocery store,
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and I finally got my weak body out there
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and I consumed, in my food,
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enough of a pesticide, a neurotoxin,
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that I couldn't find my way home?
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And this is what we mean by multiple
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and interacting causes of death.
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And it's not just our honeybees.
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All of our beautiful wild species of bees
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are at risk, including those tomato-pollinating bumblebees.
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These bees are providing backup for our honeybees.
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They're providing the pollination insurance
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alongside our honeybees.
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We need all of our bees.
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So what are we going to do?
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What are we going to do about this big bee bummer
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that we've created?
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It turns out, it's hopeful. It's hopeful.
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Every one of you out there can help bees
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in two very direct and easy ways.
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Plant bee-friendly flowers,
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and don't contaminate these flowers,