The Honey Trap

Everyone knows the honey bee, but it’s just one species – there are 20,000 others! Humans
have depended on bees – both wild and managed – for millennia. But as bee populations
collapse around the world, can we save them before it’s too late?

Wild bees like the rusty-patched bumble bee are vanishing — but not without a fight. Conservation photographer Clay Bolt shares how a rare sighting sparked a nationwide effort to protect native pollinators. Shane joins Clay in Wisconsin to witness one of North America’s rarest bees and uncovers how pesticides, habitat loss, and climate change are threatening the future of wild bees.

Pollination gets personal when Shane meets Margarita Lopez-Uribe, an entomologist who studies squash bees — a wild, solitary species with a deep evolutionary bond to agriculture. These high-speed pollinators rely solely on cultivated squash to survive, revealing how humans and bees have co-evolved for millennia — and what their survival means for the future of farming.

From billion-dollar almond orchards to parasite-fighting labs, Shane dives into the hidden costs of industrial pollination. Commercial beekeeper John Miller and scientist Dr. Sammy Ramsey reveal how honey bees became essential to our food system — and how diseases, parasites, and stress are pushing them to the brink. Can we save the bees before the next pollinator pandemic hits?