Honey bees are the bee’s knees. They make beeswax, propolis and royal jelly. They also make some of the best tasting stuff on the planet – honey – a complex food containing many minerals and healing properties and contains 75% sugar. You’ve probably heard of it. You should be eating some every day. Bulk buy it – it never spoils.

Honey bees have this other nifty little trick called pollination. Plants use the colourful cues of iridescence to make themselves attractive to bees. Bee pollination is responsible for the growth of all fruits and many vegetables as well as livestock feed – they’re real important. Humans rely on this pollination to a tune estimated at anywhere between $14 billion and $92 billion in the U.S. alone.

But things are looking grim, with hives being decimated by a disease called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Read more