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Speaker 1: From Bloomberg Environment. This is the Business of Bees, a

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Speaker 1: pop up podcast about the humble honeybee and the outsized

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Speaker 1: role it plays in our economy. The business of bees

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Speaker 1: is quite good, kind of like the panda, aren't they of?

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Speaker 1: Kind of inverstbrate conservation. It's a big enough difference that

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Speaker 1: without them there would be really no point in trying

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Speaker 1: to farm almonds out here. In fact, these days, about

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Speaker 1: one in three bites of food you eat wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: possible without commercial bee pollination. You know, they'll go from

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Speaker 1: almonds to plums, two cherries to apples, two wine crops

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Speaker 1: to pitt fruits, to cotton, to lima beans to watermelons,

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Speaker 1: and then their season is old. As important as bees

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Speaker 1: have become for farming, there's also increasing signs that bees

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Speaker 1: are in trouble. Adult bees leave the hive and never

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Speaker 1: come back, leaving the babies to Researchers blame pesticides, disease,

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Speaker 1: and parasites. In the decades since colony collapse disorder started

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Speaker 1: making headlines across the country, bees are still dying in

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Speaker 1: record numbers. This last year I had the most losses

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Speaker 1: I have ever had in trying to track down answers

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Speaker 1: to why this is still happening. We spoke with people

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Speaker 1: at every corner of the honeybee ecosystem. I can't sleep

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Speaker 1: at night a lot of times. You have to be

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Speaker 1: paranoid to be a beekeeper these days. And we asked

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Speaker 1: them big questions about things like is the way we're

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Speaker 1: raising bees actually hurting them? We've put these colonies right

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Speaker 1: next to each other, and we've sort of rewarded these

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Speaker 1: parasites for their worst possible instincts. And after years and

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Speaker 1: years of research, what have we found out about the

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Speaker 1: connections between pesticides and be health? Literally thousands of studies

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Speaker 1: suggesting that one way or another of these chemicals are

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Speaker 1: having a really significant negative impact on our environment. And

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Speaker 1: that has to be to way to grow food than

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Speaker 1: applying incredibly persistent neurotoxins. If you, like us, find yourself

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Speaker 1: fascinated by bees and concerned about what's happening with pollinators

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Speaker 1: in our environment, take out your phone right now and subscribe.

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Speaker 1: I'm Adam Ellington back to you very soon.