This is scientific American's 60 second science. I'm Christopher Intalyata. Got a minute?

The widespread death of honeybees has some farmers fretting.

Because if honeybees disappear, who will pollinate their crops?

Almost any kind of insect you can think of.

Margie Mayfield, an ecologist at the University of Queensland in Australia.

Globally speaking, flies are probably the second largest group of crop pollinators.

In particular, a group called hover flies or surfid flies.

And these are these sort of large-eyed flies that if you take a hike you sometimes see them hovering in front of your face.

Along with hoverflies, the army of underappreciated pollinators includes butterflies, moths, beetles, ants, and wasps.

Mayfield and her colleagues analyze more than three dozen studies on pollination,

covering 17 crop plants grown on five continents.

And they found that some of these underdog insects accounted for some

40% of the flower visits. And some of the crops in their review, especially tropical ones like

mangoes and custard apples, not rely on honey bees at all.

Even commodities like canola did fine without the bees.

The meta analysis is in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Mayfield says part of the difficulty engaging the importance of bees starts with the research methods.

A third of the studies they initially considered, for example, ignored everything but bees.

You know, the European honeybee is obviously from Europe, so there's a lot of focus on the

European honeybee there.

Another issue, she says says is just raising awareness among farmers.

I've encountered farmers in California and in South Africa and in Australia who spray their pesticides largely at night because that's when the bees have

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