What We Can Do

The Evidence for Optimism

Conservation of bee populations is not a lost cause. Multiple interventions — at the level of national policy, landscape management, agricultural practice, and individual action — have demonstrated measurable positive effects on bee populations. The question is not whether recovery is possible, but whether the scale and pace of action will match the scale and pace of decline.

Countries and regions that have implemented strong pollinator protection policies — including the European Union's neonicotinoid restrictions, England's national pollinator strategy, and Germany's Action Programme for Insect Protection — have seen stabilization or modest recovery in some managed and wild bee populations in areas where the policies have been effectively implemented. The correlation between habitat restoration programs and local bee diversity is consistently positive in the scientific literature.

Policy and Regulatory Action

The most impactful conservation interventions for bees occur at the policy level, because they affect the largest land areas and largest numbers of bees. The most important policy levers include:

Pesticide Regulation

The European Union's 2018 ban on outdoor agricultural use of three major neonicotinoids — imidacloprid, clothianidin, and thiamethoxam — was the most significant regulatory action for bee protection in recent history. Studies conducted in the years following the ban found measurable improvements in wild bee populations in some regions and crops, though the picture is complex and context-dependent.

Effective pesticide regulation for bee protection requires not only restrictions on the most harmful compounds but also improvements in the registration process for new pesticides — specifically, more rigorous testing of sublethal chronic effects on bees before registration, rather than relying solely on acute lethal-dose studies.

Habitat Protection and Restoration

The European Union's Common Agricultural Policy has been reformed to require member states to dedicate a percentage of agricultural land to non-productive, ecologically beneficial features — including flower-rich field margins, hedgerows, and wildflower strips. When these features are planted with appropriate native species and managed correctly, they provide measurable benefits to wild bee populations in surrounding areas.

In the United States, the USDA's Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) pays farmers to keep environmentally sensitive land out of production and maintain it with native grasses and wildflowers. Research has consistently shown that farms adjacent to CRP land support significantly higher wild bee diversity and abundance than farms in purely agricultural landscapes.

National Pollinator Strategies

Several countries have adopted formal national pollinator strategies — coordinated plans that set targets for bee population monitoring, habitat creation, pesticide reduction, and research funding. The United Kingdom's National Pollinator Strategy (2014) and the United States' National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators (2015) are among the most developed. These strategies provide a framework for coordinating action across agriculture, land management, research, and public engagement.

Landscape-Scale Habitat Restoration

The single most impactful large-scale intervention for wild bee populations is the restoration of diverse flowering habitat. Research has established clear relationships between the area and diversity of flowering habitat in a landscape and the diversity and abundance of wild bee species in that landscape.

Effective habitat restoration for bees focuses on native wildflower species rather than cultivated ornamentals — many of which have been bred for aesthetic traits (larger, more colorful flowers) that reduce nectar and pollen production or make nectar inaccessible to bees. Native wildflowers have co-evolved with native bees over millennia and provide the nutritional profiles and physical structures that native bees are adapted to use.

Wildflower meadow restoration on agricultural land — as field margins, buffer strips, and unproductive land — provides the greatest landscape-level benefit. Even small areas of native wildflowers can support substantial bee populations: a single acre of diverse native wildflowers can support hundreds of species of wild bees if it is embedded in a landscape that also provides nesting habitat.

Supporting Beekeepers

Managed honeybee colonies provide the majority of commercial pollination services and support a beekeeping industry that employs tens of thousands of people globally. Beekeepers — particularly small-scale and hobbyist beekeepers — also function as a distributed monitoring network for bee health. A decline in beekeeping undermines both commercial pollination capacity and the knowledge base required to respond to bee disease outbreaks.

Supporting beekeepers means: purchasing local honey and bee products rather than imported alternatives (supporting local beekeepers economically); advocating for government programs that provide training, veterinary support, and financial assistance to beekeepers managing Varroa and other diseases; and supporting research into Varroa-resistant bee genetics that would reduce the dependency on chemical treatments.

Research and Monitoring

Effective conservation requires accurate monitoring — knowing which populations are declining, where, and why. Current bee monitoring in most countries is inadequate. Unlike birds, which have been systematically monitored for decades through citizen science programs, most bee species lack baseline population data against which current numbers can be compared. We often cannot say with precision how much populations have declined because we do not know where they started.

Citizen science programs — including the Great British Bee Count, the Xerces Society's Bumble Bee Watch, and the USDA's National Agriculture Library pollinator monitoring resources — are beginning to fill this gap. These programs train members of the public to identify bee species and report observations, generating population data at scales that professional researchers cannot achieve alone.

What You Can Do

Individual action matters. The cumulative effect of millions of individual choices — in gardens, purchasing, advocacy, and community engagement — has a measurable impact on the resources available to bee populations. Here is what the evidence supports:

In Your Garden

Plant native wildflowers. This is the highest-impact individual action for supporting wild bees. Native wildflowers provide the pollen and nectar profiles that native bee species have evolved to use. Even a small patch — a window box, a border strip, a converted lawn section — provides food for local bees. Prioritize species that bloom at different times from early spring through late autumn to provide continuous forage throughout the bee season.

Eliminate pesticide use. Residential lawns and gardens are often more heavily treated with pesticides per acre than agricultural land. Eliminating pesticide use entirely — or switching to bee-safe alternatives and timing applications to avoid bloom periods — removes a significant source of toxic exposure for local bee populations.

Leave some bare ground. Approximately 70% of wild bee species nest in the ground. A patch of bare, undisturbed soil in a sunny, south-facing location provides nesting habitat for mining bees, digger bees, and many other species. Resist the impulse to mulch every exposed soil surface.

Put up a bee house. Cavity-nesting species including mason bees and leafcutter bees readily adopt artificial nesting structures — bundles of hollow stems or drilled wooden blocks. A bee house placed in a south-facing, sheltered location will typically be colonized within a season. Bee houses do not require management and do not produce honey — they are habitat, not hives.

Leave dead wood and hollow stems. Many solitary bees nest in hollow plant stems or in the pithy centers of broken plant stems. Leaving dead flower stalks standing through winter — rather than cutting them to the ground — provides overwintering habitat for dozens of bee species.

In Your Community

Advocate for reduced mowing. Road verges, median strips, and park grasslands managed with reduced mowing frequency can support substantial wildflower and bee populations. Many municipalities are beginning to implement "no-mow" or "low-mow" programs after public pressure from residents who understand the value of these habitats.

Support local beekeepers. Buying local honey — from a beekeeper you know, at a farmers market, or directly from a local apiary — provides direct economic support to the people maintaining managed bee populations in your area. Local honey also reflects the wildflower diversity of your region in a way that industrial honey cannot.

Talk about bees. Public awareness of bee decline correlates with public support for the policies that address it. Sharing what you know — with family, neighbors, on social media, in schools — builds the constituency for bee-friendly policies. This is not a small thing.

In Your Purchasing Choices

Support organic and bee-friendly certified agriculture. Products carrying organic certification or the Bee Better certification mark come from farms that have implemented specific bee-friendly practices — including pesticide restrictions and pollinator habitat requirements. Consumer demand for these products creates economic incentives for farmers to adopt bee-friendly practices.

Reduce lawn area. Converting lawn to native plant gardens is among the most ecologically significant landscape changes a homeowner can make. Conventional turf grass provides almost no food or habitat value for bees. Native plant gardens can support dozens of bee species in the same footprint.