Mass deaths of millions of Bees. Is this the beginning of the end?

[1a2b3c4deltaradio]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/08/record-us-bee-colony-dieoffs-climate-stress-pesticides-silent-spring-aoe

The link is about the mass death of millions of honey Bees which are also used to pollinate crops all around the country in the US.
This has massive implications! Food price increase is a big one. If the US is struggling then they will be importing more and everything will go up for everyone.

I'm actually terrified. Food security is a big worry for me (grew up poor and hungry) and so I have a beautiful well looked after garden full of food. We can manage to basically leave out the fruit and veg from our shopping for half the year usually. Not this year. We have been having to hand pollinate our plants to encourage fruits (pumpkins, courgettes etc the big ones)
I was wondering if something was up and saw this happening in the US. Is it happening here in the UK too? Anecdotally our friends and neighbours (the gardeners or allotmenteers) have seen a fall in pollination the past few years. However we have had a good few housing estates built around the area, so we attributed it to that, less space for wildlife? Our council still uses glysophate weed killer on our streets (which obviously run into our gardens too.)

I'm at my wits end here, I feel like any good I can do is being cancelled out in one second by the powers that be. I can't compete and its so worrying.

I have noticed far far more ladybirds recently than I usually see. Just casually about the place, without even looking. I was working down the side of the house at the weekend and easily came across thirty, but I’ve also noticed more in our local woods. All of them dead though, except one or two. Isn’t that strange?

We have a lot of lavender and white buddleia in the garden and clover in the lawn. They have all been thick with bees for weeks. The whole garden is full of the sound of them. We've also had a lot of cabbage whites, but not many other butterflies. We were at an open garden on Saturday and the place was heaving with bees, wasps, butterflies, ladybirds and loads of other insects - everyone was commenting, especially on the numbers of butterflies.

This is in the north of England.

I don't know much about it and did see an alarming amount of seemingly sad or stranded looking bees around the house and garden in the spring (always rescued them and put them on flowers) but since then, I have noticed a lot of bees all over certain flowering plants and in my vegetable patch, and I've certainly not had any difficulty producing courgettes this year. In fact, I have too bloody many, as usual! Just wanted to add another small voice of positivity.

And yes to the many ladybirds. I thought there must be another plague of ladybirds like we had back in 1976, but I googled and could find no mention of it. But there are 1000s in my garden (south west England).

This has been the first year in about 20 that we have driven 200 miles down the motorway and had lots of dead insects on the windscreen. I think it's been a great year for insects. We have a tulip tree and when it was flowering it was so loud! Other insects than honey bees pollinate, hoverflies are brilliant.

Honey bees aren't even native to the USA or UK, they are spreading diseases to wild bees so maybe we'd be better off without them anyway?

The Bees are getting ready for winter earlier than usual. Which means its going to be a long long winter for them.
The wasps are tremendous this year and again have finished their season earlier so will be bothering you for your scone and jam now.

There's also a pesky Yellow-legged hornet you should all be aware of - especially if you live in Kent and the SE.
https://www.nationalbeeunit.com/diseases-and-pests/asian-hornet

I’m in Scotland and there’s been an absolute plethora of bees, wasps, other insects, beetles, butterflies and birds this summer. More than I’ve ever noticed previously. It’s been lovely.

Some of these US agribusinesses really would be desert, I think, if it wasn’t for the massive (over)use of irrigation. Water may be more of an issue for some of their farms than bees are.
It’s really striking when you fly over the US - more mixed areas on the east coast give way to enormous fields followed by swathes of irrigated circles followed by what appears from the air to be just geology. It’s very different to our lush little island. We’ve degraded natural ecosystems here, of course, but I think we’re generally better placed to restore them.

Very happy to have seen lots and lots of bees this year, butterflies in abundance too 😃

Lots of ladybirds this year https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c14emrx5x66o

I've been to the almond farms. It's like a desert... because they're grown in an actual desert. 🤦‍♀️ Any grass is a feat of achievement in and of itself in that environment.

This. We've had two bee swarms in our garden this year (Hampshire). The flowerbeds, trees and shrubs are positively buzzing. Generally more insects, not just bees. They love lavender and marjoram.

And more frogs, that have sung me to sleep the last few nights. Presumably because there are plenty of insects for them to eat. Fewer dragonflies and damsel flies but recovering in the last few weeks.

If the US is having problems, well their administration is hardly environmentally friendly is it. God knows what people have been spraying, fully aware that they will get away with it.

I'm outside York and see lots of bee's and wasps in my garden, plus lots of butterfly's this year.
Our apple tree is doing really well despite being a new tree, had tonnes of plums (even after the wasps got to some) and the small strawberry plant/pink lemonade blueberry bush and the tomato bushes are doing really well.
I've also noticed so so many blackberries around and most are ripe.
So many ladybirds this year too, hoping they help shift the greenfly in my trees.

Loads of bees of all sorts in my garden, loads of butterflies and moths, loads of other insects too.

A lot of US agriculture is large scale monoculture and neonicotinoids are also still legal and used, which disrupts bees. This is why we need to stop covering so much of our own farmland with solar panels, which should go on factories, car parks and other such locations.

Re the almond deserts in California, the reason is that the ground under the trees is kept clear to allow the harvesting machinery to be driven through the orchards. They do plant bee banks elsewhere because they need the insects to pollinate the blossom.

Around where I live (SE England) I'd say insects have had a better year than they have in a long time. I've had a lot more insects on my car windscreen this year and in our garden we have a bumper crop of apples this year. Walking around the local parks too I see elderberries and plums and our oak tree has a ton of acorns. I think the move away from the more harmful pesticides in the UK and also councils doing no-mow May, leaving sections of public parks and verges wild, sowing wildflower mix, farmers increasing biodiversity on their land, etc is all starting to have an impact - a positive impact. It's really good to see. The US is way behind in this stuff and with Trump in charge it will remain so.

But a lot of the sort of plants you see in ‘bee borders’ wouldn’t exactly be a major issue for industrial harvesters would they?

I’m SW too (Bristol)

I was furious when the council came round and sprayed every weed locally with industrial weedkiller. I remove all the weeds in my .local street once a .month so they are controlled. After that nearly all the bees disapeared. I go out of my way to plant bee friendly plants. I was fuming. There is no need for such poison to be spread everywhere.

<waves to neighbour>

We’ve had loads of bees this year and wonderful apples

the only annoyance is daft flappy moths

We have quite a lot of bees this year.
Lots more insects than usual, thousands of flies. And wasps ate all our early plums 😔

Dh is a beekeeper and regional inspector in Canada. Bee keeping practices in the USA is very commercialized, monocultural involves transportation of millions of hives. Very reliant on immigrant labor. As mentioned recent cuts to agricultural funding and the current political drama has caused much of this. Very obvious and easily solved but many are uninterested.
I don’t think anyone needs to be concerned the deaths are due to poor management not poor bee health overall.

I haven’t read the article but if it’s about the US they use bees in agriculture in a very unnatural way. Huge lorries packed with hives full of bees are shipped into gigantic monocultures of a single crop. The bees pollinate for a few weeks and they are then of no further use. I’m not surprised this has become unsustainable. Bees are amazing and complex creatures, not a manufactured crop application.

The Guardian did a story about bees used in US almond farms a few years ago and there was a problem brewing then.

A bit of an aside, this is a big issue I have with the "veganism will save the environment" crowd, particularly in North America. They seem to be in the dark that industrial agriculture involving plants is just as ecologically destructive, including to wildlife, as industrial animal agriculture. And the two are also massively interconnected structurally.

I thought they'd recently found that almost all of the bee colonies that have died out were infected with a bee virus? Sure I read that very recently.