Flitting from plant to plant, from flower to flower, bees and other insect pollinators play an essential role in crop pollination and the human food supply. But they’re struggling: intensive agriculture and climate change have taken a heavy toll on their populations.
Might our cities be the perfect haven for these pollinators? Amid the brick and concrete, steel and glass, there are parks, gardens and curious bits of greenery — and here you can find honey bees, bumblebees, solitary bees, flies and butterflies.
In this film we meet the scientists from the Insect Pollinators Initiative, an ambitious UK-wide scientific collaboration that’s exploring where and how wild bees and other pollinators are living in cities around the UK. And as we follow renowned guerrilla gardener Richard Reynolds around his home in London’s concrete maze, Elephant and Castle, we discover a curious symbiosis between humans and bees. By investing in the future of bees living successfully in cities, we may also be investing in our own health and happiness.
This article first appeared on Mosaic and is republished here under Creative Commons licence.