[gentle music] - [Rossie] When you picture a bee, it's probably the honeybee you're thinking of, and that makes sense.

[bees buzzing] We raise millions of these honeybee colonies in the U.S., because we rely on them to pollinate 1/3 of all our commercial crops, things like almonds, berries, and squash.

Plus, they are cute with their fuzzy little appendages.

But here's the thing, honeybees are just one of the thousands of bee species worldwide, and they tend to be the poster child for bee conservation, and that's really bad news for the thousands of bees you've never heard of.

Let's talk about wild bees.

[playful music] - So as far as bees go, they're a extremely diverse group of organisms.

There are more than 20,000 different species of bees in the world, over 4,000 in North America, and right now in North Carolina, we think we have about 564 different species of bees.

- [Rossie] But more than half of these species are declining, and one in four are at risk of extinction.

Meanwhile, honeybees are domesticated.

We know how to raise them.

So rallying conservation support behind the honeybee is kind of like rallying behind the house cat, when you're trying to save the critically-endangered West African lion, or trying to save the chicken, when you're concerned about declining bird populations.

What's really concerning are the thousands of bees we don't know much about.

Some of these bees have specialized relationships with specific plants.

Without them, we lose those plants, and the animals that depend on those plants.

Bee loss could damage countless delicate ecosystems, and ripple through the food chain.

- So bees get sick just like us.

They can be infected with viruses, as well as gut parasites.

- [Rossie] This is Dr. Hannah Levenson.

She's a community ecologist, and she's working on solutions to the pollinator problem.

- But I think one of the biggest ones is the habitat.

I think that when we add habitat back into the environment, that can have immediate impacts on bee populations working to support them.

And so that's a big one that I think we can focus on.

- [Rossie] The irony of this situation is that we're growing plants that need pollination in an incredibly tough environment for bees, and that is monoculture farming.

It's highly mechanized, incredibly efficient, and responsible for feeding the eight billion-and-counting people on this planet.

But these homogenous landscapes, and the pesticides that come with them, aren't great for wild bees.

The same is true for sprawling housing development.

- So bees need nesting habitat, where they build their nests, lay their eggs, raise their young.

And they also need forage habitat, where they collect food resources.

- [Rossie] Honeybees and bumblebees are cavity nesters, but the vast majority of bee species live and lay eggs underground.

So disturbed land, whether it's for farms or subdivisions, means less habitat for wild bees.

- So as we clear areas to develop and build, there's not gonna be the bare ground the bees need.

There won't be the woody materials that bees need.

And then if there's no flowers around, then there's no pollen and nectar for bees to collect.

- [Rossie] But Hannah is documenting a solution to this problem, and discovering that even a little effort can go a long way.

This is an experimental farm.

It's part of NC State's Agriculture Extension Network.

A few years ago, these research sites were required to add pollinator-friendly flowers along the edges of their crops.

It's a throwback to the ancient hedgerow, which were used for centuries in Europe, to divide agriculture fields and residential properties.

- We wanted to see what actually happened to the bee community when this habitat was added into the environment.

Was it actually doing what we wanted it to do?

Was the effort we were putting in providing enough resources to bees, and could we come up with some recommendations for how to improve that habitat?

- [Rossie] The short answer, it worked.

Even adding small plantings increased both the number and the diversity of bee populations.

Hannah even found a very rare species of bumblebee, and there are other benefits to these plantings too.

- So a lot of the research stations planted this in areas that were otherwise unusable, or weren't suitable for certain crops.

So if you have an area that just is sitting, you could plant this seed mix there.

It also provides reduced maintenance during the summer.

So while the plants are active in providing habitat for all of our wildlife, you don't have to mow, you don't have to do weed maintenance.

- [Rossie] Hannah says this research applies to non-farmers too, basically anyone who has access to a yard, or even a window box.

Start small, get a local flower seed mix, and leave the flowers alone after they die.

- So a lot of people have the tendency to when the plants start dying, it doesn't look as nice, to cut it back.

But we would recommend actually leaving it as long as possible.

And there is evidence that organisms that we care about overwinter in this sort of habitat, so we need to leave that for them all winter, and into the spring.

But then beyond that, start where you can, add little bits at a time, and you can always work up and expand it.

Even when people are doing it and it's not perfect, we still do get a benefit to the bee community.