There are more than 20,000 species of bees in the world today, but more than 25% are under threat.
“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years left to live” ~ Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee.
is quite possibly right (though often misattributed to Einstein). Let’s hope we never find out.
Bees in Tourism
It’s a relationship that most people haven’t thought about.
Can you imagine staying in a place that doesn’t maintain its trees and flowers for guests’ aesthetic pleasure?
That doesn’t offer guests delicious food including pollinated fruit and vegetables, tea and coffee?
Or that doesn’t have honey?
That’s what we’d get if it weren’t for bees.
Where would we be without healthy national parks, flora in ecotourism, or even destination weddings and honeymoons looking pretty?
We take for granted the health of land and plants, key to tourism destinations looking attractive.
We might occasionally be grateful to gardeners we witness maintaining grounds, or delivery drivers dropping off produce, appreciating their labour. But behind every great gardener or food supply chain is an army of helpers in the form of bees.
The Bees Needs for Sustainability
Bees are multi-skilled sustainability leaders:
- Bees pollinate our flora
– supporting approximately 1/6 of flowering species worldwide. Not only do bees build bee-autiful environments for us to enjoy, but they perpetuate and nurture floral growth, creating attractive habitats for insects and birds.
- Bees pollinate our food
The honeybee is the world’s top pollinator of crops: approximately 400 different agricultural types of plant. Around 80% of US commercial crops are dependent on bees’ pollination for reproduction which increases yields and quality. If it weren’t for bees, we wouldn’t have asparagus, almonds, apples, blackberries, blueberries, broccoli, brazil nuts, beans, cantaloupes, cucumbers, cranberries and cherries – and that’s just the a, b, c…
- Bees pollinate our food’s food
– like clover and alfalfa, fed to cattle, with implications for our meat and dairy.
- Bees pollinate other crops
– key to our daily lives, such as cotton and flax, used for clothes, homes, feed and fertiliser.
- Bees support other non-pollinated crops
With their pollination work, they help the local environment with biodiversity stimulation.
- Bees produce honey
and honeycomb, including important anti-bacterial properties used in alternative medicinal products, like royal jelly. In fact, they are the only insect that produces food eaten by man, and honey is the only food that includes all the substances necessary to sustain life!
The value of bees globally is billions commercially, approximately $577 billion including other pollinators, not to mention priceless for our ecosystem and health. (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services on pollinators, pollination and food production, 2016), reaffirmed in 2025 noting emphasizing that the broader ecosystem and human well-being impacts are “incalculable” beyond monetary terms. This $ figure represents the potential loss to global food production if pollination services were lost, corresponding to around 8% of total agricultural output worldwide (FAO, 2025)
On Bee-ing Threatened
Concerns over bee numbers began to emerge in the late nineties. It’s not easy to count bees, but studies have consistently shown a decline over the past decade, regardless of country, species, or crop type.
On the IUCN Red List, five wild species (5.5% bee species) are currently listed as Critically Endangered, eight as Endangered (8.8%) and ten as vulnerable (11%). That’s over 25% bee species being of concern. A further four (4.4%) are near threatened. However, recent assessments (2025), especially at the European level, show that about 10% of wild bee species are now classified as threatened, with roughly 100 additional species recognized as vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered.
In Europe around 37% total bee species are in decline, with 57% bee species data deficient and unknown (IPBES, 2016). Recent assessments of the Western Honey Bee in the wild have updated its status to “Endangered” within the European Union, while data remains lacking for other parts of Europe.
A 2020 study revealed bumblebees disappearing at rates “consistent with a mass extinction”, and on course to be wiped out in just a “few decades”, signalling, “We have now entered the world’s sixth mass extinction event, the biggest and most rapid global biodiversity crisis since a meteor ended the age of the dinosaurs”.
Bumblebee populations – particularly in Europe and North America – continue to experience severe declines. 2024 was the worst year on record for British bumblebees, with the Red-tailed Bumblebee population plummeting by 74%, largely due to climate-change-driven weather extremes such as cold, wet springs disrupting essential survival behaviours. Over 20% of Europe’s wild bumblebee species are threatened, a sharp increase from previous assessments.
These declines are worsened and linked to the catastrophic loss of biodiversity caused by man-made production and consumption, industry, land use change and habitat loss, with fewer wild plant species to feed on, bees’ immune systems become compromised and as a result, they are much more susceptible to diseases.
‘Colony Collapse Disorder’ is seen when pathogens, including various fungi, parasites and viruses, move through hives causing harm, along with direct impacts of synthetic chemicals like pesticides. Industrial product-maximizing beekeeping practices for bee-pollinated crops and the impact of climate change act to negatively exploit overworked colonies.
As bee numbers decline, so will our biodiversity and crop yields, pushing the price of pollinated crops up, including our food and fabrics. The UN ‘The State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture (FAO, 2019) report and 2025 FAO assessment updates emphasize that the loss of soil quality, plants, trees, and pollinators such as birds, bats, and especially bees, continues to critically undermine global food production systems.
Biodiversity loss increasingly threatens the resilience, sustainability, and nutrition of agrifood systems worldwide. Plant genetic diversity is also rapidly diminishing, with more than 40% of plant species no longer found in their historical ranges and about one-third of tree species threatened with extinction, further jeopardizing stable food supplies.
What can we do to halt the decline and reverse the effects?
Bee-ing Sustainable in Tourism
Organic farms provide forage as food for bees and generally employ less intensive agricultural methods to prevent the pollinators from being ‘overworked’.
Many of our partners’ destinations keep bees as an important part of the ecosystem balance.
Just two hives can pollinate an entire mid-sized garden for thriving plants!
Keeping bees can support local agriculture, food, biodiversity, jobs and the production and selling of honey products, so community, commerce and local economy.
In Madagascar, in the rural Anosy region, most of the population depend on farming for survival. In the increasingly unpredictable climate, droughts are common leading to failed harvests or low yields. A rapidly expanding population compounds these traditional livelihoods increasingly unable to provide sufficient and stable incomes for rural families, forcing communities to use forest and marine resources around them, leading to overexploitation, habitat destruction and loss of biodiversity. Madagascar’s honeybee, Apis mellifera unicolor, is one of the country’s 150,000 endemic species at risk from habitat loss, plus disease and invasive parasite pressures such as Varroa mites.
Honey bee-keeping creates a valuable income stream, reduces pressure on natural resources, and actively supports biodiversity in this country where 75% of flora and fauna is dependent on insect pollination for survival. As it’s neither time nor labour intensive, beekeeping can complement existing livelihoods enabling vulnerable households to supplement their income, while crucially contributing to the pollination of the surrounding crops and littoral rainforest. It can also support gender equality by securing female representation among primary beekeepers.
The charity’s project worked to improve the viability and sustainability of beekeeping as a livelihood amongst rural communities in the region, increasing local capacity in beekeeping and equipping beekeepers with the skills and resources to apply modern beekeeping practices. Sharing skills and knowledge within the communities and between beekeepers themselves amplified the project’s impact and led to increased yields, healthier colonies and strengthened disease prevention. This enhanced product quality, improving the honey value chain through to establishing secure routes to market, and the project’s long-term sustainability and replicability.
Bee charitable, volunteer in conservation in Madagascar >
Bee Tourism = Apitourism!
Did you know there’s a whole niche of tourism just dedicated to Bees? Its formal name is Apitourism, which comes from the Latin name of the bee, “Apis mellifera”.
It links the art of beekeeping and the life of the bee with beekeepers livelihoods, lives, traditions and environments, and bee products, honey or for health.
It gives a whole new approach to ecotourism and can offer a new perspective on visiting rural areas and cultural heritage to help create positive impacts. Drop us a line if you’re interested!
Bee Aware
In many landscapes, or when an orchard stops blooming, farmed honeybees can compete with wild bees for food, actually making it harder for wild species to survive. A healthy environment needs bees — but not necessarily honeybees.
Concern for honeybees has helped raise awareness of the importance of more land free from pesticides and covered with wildflowers and trees. When flowers are abundant, it’s an environment with plenty of pollen good for both honeybees and wild bees.
Aren’t bees amazing? We must protect them! We have a lot to thank them for.
Be mindful of the importance of supporting our bees, and their supporters – Please do share the Importance of Bee-ing in Travel!
