he great bee die-off in the US and Europe has been known about for a while. A shortage of honeybees, it’s feared, threatens various crops that depend on them as pollinators. But now some research has put numbers on just how bad the bee deficit is in Europe. And the numbers are alarming, to say the least.

In the study of 41 countries, published yesterday, researchers found that between 2005 and 2010, demand for so-called ‘pollinator services” grew nearly five times faster than the supply of bees. In the UK, researchers estimate that there are now only enough beehives to meet a quarter of demand. Through a broad swath of Europe, they can meet only 25% to 50%. Overall, almost half the countries studied had bee deficits. ‘We face a catastrophe in future years unless we act now,” researcher Simon Potts of the University of Reading in the UK, told The Guardian.

Why hasn’t there been a catastrophe already? Because ‘wild pollinators”-bumblebees, hoverflies and others-have picked up the strain. That’s the good news. The bad news is that scientists have little hard data on wild bee numbers and their pollinating habits. Worse, wild bees may be just as much at risk as […]