It is a public health triumph that human life expectancy has increased linearly since the year 1800, rising about 30 years in that span. Imagine, then, if human life expectancy were to spontaneously halve, and the degree of panic that would ensue.

Alarmingly, this precise scenario is playing out among honeybees — a species on which humans are utterly dependent for our survival, given that one-third of the human diet depends on honeybee pollination, and bees pollinate more than 100 different crops worth about $6.4 billion. The bee lifespan crisis was discovered in a new study published in the scientific journal Scientific Reports, which found that honey bees today live only half as long as their counterparts in the 1970s.

The reasons for this dramatic shift may relate to humanity’s demand for honey. Beekeepers need to account for the fact that bees die periodically in the course of their hive-rearing; since the 1970s […]