Researchers doing checks on the population of bees recieved a shock when some native species of bees began mysteriously dropping in numbers.
By comparing their findings to historical records of native bees, they noticed significant declines in species such as the rusty-patched bumblebee and franklin's bumblebee.
But why was this happening? Eventually, it was narrowed down to a combination of four main factors.
Habitat loss can influence pollinators by narrowing the scope of where flowers are and which flowers are available. Some bees get their pollen from a wide variety of flowers, but many native bees are specialized to a certain type of flower. When their options are narrowed, their populations can fall from a lack of the flowers they're used to.
Pesticides can do a lot of harm to bees, or even kill them if they're concentrated enough. When pollinators can't reach a plant to pollinate it, the plant will have to be manually pollinated with brushes. This is much more expensive and labor intensive then letting bees do the work for you, and it can harm the bees as well.
Diseases can also hurt bees a lot. For industrial farms, hives of bees are often mass-produced, and this environment can suffer from huge disease outbreaks. Even if the disease doesn't hurt that particular speices of bee, it can spread to other bees in the wild when the hives are used in farms.
And lastly, of course, climate change is a major perpetrator. Global warming shortens the spring, and messes up the precise annual schedules bee colonies follow. This can result in bees getting less food, and since they make honey to store food for winter, they can suffer severe population loss in the winter.
But these bees can be protected! Visit the other pages to see how.