It may be one of nature’s oddest couples: a tiny wasp that can barely be seen, and a giant fig tree, the sycomore, which shelters a remarkable menagerie of wildlife among its limbs. The wasp and the fig depend on each other for survival. Without the wasp, the tree could not pollinate its flowers and produce seeds. Without the fig, the wasp would have nowhere to lay its eggs.

The Queen of Trees shows this delicate dance of survival in exquisite detail, including spectacular close-ups of the wasp’s remarkable life inside a ripening fig. To capture such incredible images, filmmakers Victoria Stone and Mark Deeble spent two years camped out near a giant sycomore fig in Kenya’s outback, documenting the tree’s pivotal role as a source of food and shelter for everything from gray hornbills, Africa’s largest bird, to swarms of invading insects searching for food. In a surprising turn, some insects come to the tree’s aid — sparking a battle you won’t want to miss.

Online content for The Queen of Trees was originally posted April 2006.

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This program premiered October 28, 2007.

The role honeybees play in our diet goes beyond honey production. These seemingly tireless creatures pollinate about one-third of crop species in the U.S. Honeybees pollinate about 100 flowering food crops including apples, nuts, broccoli, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, celery, squash and cucumbers, citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe, melons, as well as animal-feed crops, such as the clover that’s fed to dairy cows. Essentially all flowering plants need bees to survive.

A daunting question is: If honeybee colonies were so severely affected by CCD that pollination stopped, could we lose these crops from our markets and our diets forever?

Honeybees pollinate about 100 flowering crops.

“We’re not there yet,” says Jeff Pettis of the USDA. Pettis says there are steps researchers and beekeepers can take to ensure that the bee population doesn’t plummet to catastrophic levels. “One measure beekeepers have been taking is to keep bees as healthy as possible — improve nutrition and reduce stress,” says Pettis. Consumers have become more demanding and expect to have fruits and vegetables available to us all year round. In order to achieve this, commercial beekeepers haul colonies of honeybees across the country so their pollination services can serve all growing seasons. The season may start with almonds in California, then move on to apples in the Northwest, cranberries in New Jersey and Maine blueberries. The constant moving about places stress on the bees. In addition, certain crops that may be in the pollination circuit, like cranberries and cucumbers, are not very nutritious for bees. To keep the bees healthy, beekeepers may need to ease up on their schedules. It may be necessary for them to retire bees for a particular season or skip some less nutritious crops entirely.

Of course, nature has its own safeguards to keep crops pollinated. Honeybees aren’t our only pollinators. Other insects and birds pollinate fruits and vegetables as well. The problem with other natural pollinators picking up the bees’ slack is that today’s agricultural industry has simply grown too large for them to keep up. The leviathan that is U.S. agriculture creates a huge demand for pollination. Because honeybees are relatively mobile and can pollinate a generous number of crops, they have been the ideal recruits to meet our crop needs. But honeybees don’t perform such feats naturally without help — lots of it. Commercial beekeepers keep colonies nourished and healthy and move their hives from state to state in semis, selling their pollination services to farmers at a premium.

With the threat of CCD looming, researchers are starting to study how other pollinators like the larger bumble bees could step in for honeybees. “The Dutch have figured out how to use bumblebees,” says Pettis. Bumblebees share many similarities with honeybees. Both are social nesters, although the bumblebees’ society is not as highly ordered as that of honeybees. Also, bumblebees make a new nest each spring by solitary queens, who hibernate through the winter. Honeybees remain in the old nest.

Perhaps the biggest consideration is an economic one. Bumblebees last just 2 months and cost $200 per colony, whereas honeybees can last several months in the summer with colony rentals running only $100 to $140. As a result, the use of bumblebee pollination is usually confined to high-value crops like tomatoes. Clearly, the use of bumblebees is a step in the right direction, but not a final solution.

“There’s nothing waiting in the wings that can replace honeybees at this time,” says Pettis, “but we can solve the problem in honeybee health.” Pettis says that by focusing on reducing stress and improving nutrition, beekeepers can limit some of the factors that potentially lead to disastrous conditions like CCD, thereby keeping bees — and our diets — healthy.

Silence of the Bees is the first in-depth look at the search to uncover what is killing the honeybee. The filmmakers of Bees take viewers around the world to the sites of fallen hives, to high-tech labs, where scientists race to uncover clues, and even deep inside honeybee colonies. Silence of the Bees is the story of a riveting, ongoing investigation to save honeybees from dying out. The film goes beyond the unsolved mystery to tell the story of the honeybee itself, its invaluable impact on our diets and takes a look at what’s at stake if honeybees disappear. Silence of the Bees explores the complex world of the honeybee in crisis and instills in viewers a sense of urgency to learn ways to help these extraordinary animals.

Silence of the Bees premiered on PBS October 28, 2007.

Exclusive Podcast: In this podcast, scientists and bee experts featured in the program discuss the crucial role that honeybees, a “keystone species,” play in our economy and ecosystems, as well as bees’ fascinating social organization and what we can do to reverse the decline of nature’s pollinators.

Honeybee (Apis mellifera)

• Type: Insect
• Family: Apidae
• Habitat: Hollow trees in forest habitats, and beekeeper hives
• Location: Native to Africa and Europe, but spread by humans to temperate and tropical climates worldwide
• Diet: Herbivore
• Average lifespan in the wild: Workers, 15 – 38 days in summer; queen bee, as much as 3 years
• Size: Worker, .5 – .6 in (12 – 15 mm); queen, .7 – .9 in (18 – 22 mm)
• Weight: Worker, .0035 ounces (100 mg); queen and drones, .007 ounces (200 mg)

Like ants and termites, common honeybees, which are black with characteristic orange-yellow rings on the abdomen, are social and cooperative insects. Three different types of bees inhabit a colony: a queen, workers, and drones. The queen bee, which is longer and heavier than worker bees, is the only sexually developed female in the colony; using a specialized organ called an ovipositor, she lays the eggs from which all of the bees in a colony emerge. Worker bees, which forage the flowers in meadows, open woods, gardens, and agricultural fields for pollen and nectar (which is converted into the honey that helps to feed the colony), and build and maintain the hive, are sexually immature females. Their ovipositors are modified into stingers. Male bees, or drones, don’t forage; they may help maintain the temperature of the hive, although their primary role is to fertilize the queen. Because they have no ovipositors, they also don’t have stingers.

Bee colonies are maintained all over the world to pollinate agricultural crops. In the winter of 2006-2007, beekeepers in the United States and other parts of the world began to report the catastrophic loss of colonies, a phenomenon dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder. While the death of some bees in a colony is normal during winter months, the recent number of deaths has been unusually high, with some colonies losing more than 75 percent of their bees. After such devastating die-offs, the colony can no longer sustain itself. Scientists are still trying to explain the phenomenon, which threatens the economic future of the 130 fruit, vegetable, nut, ornamental, and fiber crops in the U.S. pollinated by honeybees.

Did you know? Forager bees will fly about 500 miles before their wings wear out and they die.

Related Episode:

• Silence of the Bees

They’re cunning and manipulative, and will do anything to get what they want. No, it’s not the cast of your favorite daytime soap. We’re speaking of the ubiquitous plant life that covers our planet, relentlessly evolving elaborate schemes to disperse its seeds and ensure the continuation of its almost limitless species.

How does such a seemingly passive life form accomplish the complex task of reproduction? Many plants take advantage of the primeval forces of Mother Nature herself to help their seeds germinate, sending them far and wide by means of wind, rain, and tides. Others have found ways to hitch rides for their seeds aboard other living things. For example, the burdock plant, which inspired inventor George de Mestral to create Velcro, has pesky burrs that sticks stubbornly to hair and fur.

Fruit, however, is perhaps the most commonly employed medium of seed mobility. Fruit-producing plants rely on the appeal of their fruits for dispersal of the seeds, and have evolved their own unique “marketing strategies” and their own select clientele — animals as well as humans — to help the process along. Even as scientists develop methods to control plant reproduction, each time we yield to the temptation to pluck a ripe juicy apple from its branch, we too become pawns in one of nature’s carefully devised game plans.

Online ontent for The Seedy Side of Plants was originally posted May 1999.