This TED Talk features ecologist Noah Wilson Rich, recorded live at TEDx Provincetown, 2018.

Pollinator decline is a grand challenge in the modern world. Of the 200,000 species of pollinators, honeybees are the most well understood, partly because of our long history with them,

dating back 8,000 years ago to our cave drawings in what's now modern-day Spain.

And yet we know that this indicator species is dying off.

Last year alone, we lost 40% of all beehives in the United States.

And that number is even higher in areas with harsh winters,

like here in Massachusetts,

where we lost 47% of beehives in one year alone.

Can you imagine if we lost half of our people last year?

And if those were the food-producing people?

It's untenable.

And I predict that in 10 years, we will lose our bees. If not for the work of beekeepers replacing these dead beehives,

we would be without foods that we rely upon, fruits, vegetables,

crunchy almonds and nuts, tart apples, sour lemons,

even the food that our cattle relies upon to eat, hay and alfalfa, gone, causing global hunger,

economic collapse, a total moral crisis across earth.

Now, I first started keeping bees here in Cape Cod, right after I finished my

doctorate in honeybee immunology.

It was...

So, imagine getting such a degree in a good economy.

And it was 2009, the Great Recession.

And I was on to something.

...