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  • bees are disappearing worldwide.

  • Scientist theories as to why include a mite that attacks bees, pesticides that kill the insects, habitat loss and even bad nutrition for bees.

  • And the cause for concern goes well beyond the collapse of honeybee colonies.

  • Bees help pollinate 35% of the world's food.

  • The Franklins Bumble Bee alone would help pollinate cranberries, blueberries and melons.

  • But that type of bee may already be extinct.

  • Vacuum in one hand and net.

  • And the other robbin Thorp, is on a quest.

  • We're coming into the area where I last saw Franklin.

  • He's searching the mountains of Oregon for Franklin's Bumble Bee.

  • It's a species he's believed to be the last person on earth to have seen alive, and he's got a sample of the B in the back of his truck.

  • It's from the 19 fifties on.

  • This is Franklin's on.

  • You can see she has a black face, a touch of whitey share.

  • Pretty subtle misses a bee that could be extinct in the wild.

  • Could be I'm not willing to give up on it, but, uh, I'm hoping that's still out there under the radar.

  • Last time you saw it was 2006 exactly 10 years before he invited me to join him.

  • Thorpe is 83 now, a retired professor from UC Davis, and mostly he works alone, day after day, year after year, I spent two days looking for Franklin's Bumble Bee with Thorpe.

  • I found the work absolutely maddening.

  • The ones that you hear fly by your ear.

  • I'm always a spare.

  • Well, that must have been a Franklin.

  • I don't think you can put an economic value on the species.

  • They're all priceless, really.

  • But Franklin's is one that I've had a lot of personal investment in, And uh, yeah, I feel an attachment kinship to it.

  • I'm not sure whether he'll find it, but maybe that's beside the point.

  • The truth is that for anyone to know a species like Franklin's Bumble bee had vanished.

bees are disappearing worldwide.

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