HMC Learn - Understand the System

Why Pollinators Are a Food Security Issue, Not a Wildlife Issue

One in three bites of food exists because a pollinator visited a flower. Most people do not know that. Most people do not know that we are currently losing pollinators faster than at any point in recorded history.

55.6%

U.S. managed honeybee colony loss, April 2024-April 2025 - the highest recorded annual rate. Commercial beekeepers reported average losses of 62%.

Source: USDA / Bee Informed Partnership, 2025

The food system is more fragile than the grocery store makes it look. That fragility is not visible until a supply chain breaks, a season fails, or a species disappears.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 75% of the world's food crop types depend on pollinators to some degree, accounting for 35% of global food production by volume. A global pollinator collapse would raise average crop prices by an estimated 187% and cause annual welfare losses exceeding $700 billion. Source: FAO, The State of the World's Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture, 2019

A 2025 study in Nature Communications found that even a partial wild pollinator collapse in Europe by 2030 would reduce crop yields by 8% and trigger EUR34 billion in annual global economic losses.

A honeybee colony is one of the most sophisticated self-organizing systems in nature. Fifty thousand individuals. No central command. Every decision made collectively.

What beekeepers observe every season is not just insect behavior - it is a model for how resilient systems distribute intelligence, share resources, and respond to threat without hierarchy. A colony does not survive because one bee is exceptional. It survives because the whole system is designed for continuity.

Colony collapse is not one event. It is the accumulation of small system failures: habitat loss, pesticide exposure, parasitic load, nutritional stress, and climate disruption, compounding over time until the colony cannot recover.

What Is Driving the Decline

The causes are well-documented and not in dispute among researchers. What is in dispute is the relative weight of each factor and what intervention is most efficient.

Varroa destructor - a parasitic mite introduced to North American honeybee populations in the 1980s - remains the single most significant factor in managed honeybee losses worldwide. Varroa weakens individual bees, suppresses immune function, and transmits viral pathogens. An untreated colony typically collapses within two to three years.

Habitat loss reduces the diversity and seasonal continuity of forage available to wild and managed pollinators. A lawn of non-native ornamentals provides almost no nutritional value to native bees. A roadside that is mowed before native plants flower removes a feeding corridor entirely.

Neonicotinoid insecticides - a class of systemic pesticide widely used in row-crop agriculture - are present in the pollen and nectar of treated plants. Their sub-lethal effects on bee navigation, memory, and immune function are documented in peer-reviewed literature, though regulatory responses vary by country and jurisdiction.

The Most Direct Thing You Can Do: Plant Something

Understanding the pollinator crisis is important. Doing something about it is better. And the action available to almost anyone - regardless of whether you have a yard, a balcony, or a windowsill - is to plant something that feeds a bee.

This is not a metaphor. Planting locally native species is one of the most direct, evidence-supported actions households can take to improve food and habitat for native insects and the birds that depend on them.

Why native plants specifically? Non-native ornamentals sold for visual appeal often provide little or no pollen or nectar value to native bees. Many are sterile hybrids bred to look a certain way rather than function ecologically. Native plants, by contrast, evolved alongside local pollinators over long periods of time. They produce the forms of pollen and nectar native bees can access and use.

This is not gardening preference - it is ecological function. A non-native ornamental may attract a bee. A native plant can sustain one.

According to the National Wildlife Federation Native Plant Finder, native-dominated plantings support much richer insect and bird life than conventional landscapes.

Native Plants for Maryland and the Mid-Atlantic

Spring

wild columbine
Virginia bluebells
redbud

Summer

purple coneflower
bee balm
swamp milkweed
black-eyed Susan

Fall

goldenrod
New England aster

Source: University of Maryland Extension · Xerces Society

You do not need a yard. Three native plants in containers on a balcony provide more ecological value than a conventional lawn. The principle is bloom succession: try to have something flowering from spring into fall so pollinators are not fed for one week and abandoned for the rest of the season.

Avoid "improved" or double-flowered native cultivars where the extra petals block access to pollen and nectar. Avoid invasive non-natives even if they attract some pollinators. Nectar alone is not the whole system. Host function matters too.

Leave a section of lawn unmowed through spring. This allows early bloomers to feed bees emerging from winter. Leave hollow stems and leaf litter through winter - they provide nesting habitat for native bees. Tidying a garden too aggressively can destroy the homes of the insects you spent all summer trying to support.