1
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
(Music)

2
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
These bees are in my backyard

3
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in Berkeley, California.

4
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Until last year,
I'd never kept bees before,

5
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but National Geographic asked me
to photograph a story about them,

6
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and I decided to be able
to take compelling images,

7
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I should start keeping bees myself.

8
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And as you may know,

9
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
bees pollinate one third
of our food crops,

10
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and lately they've been having
a really hard time.

11
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So as a photographer, I wanted to explore
what this problem really looks like.

12
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So I'm going to show you
What I found over the last year.

13
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
This furry little creature

14
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is a fresh young bee halfway emerged

15
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
from its brood cell,

16
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and bees right now are dealing
with several different problems,

17
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
including pesticides, diseases,

18
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and habitat loss,

19
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but the single greatest threat
is a parasitic mite from Asia,

20
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Varroa destructor.

21
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And this pinhead-sized mite
crawls onto young bees

22
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and sucks their blood.

23
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
This eventually destroys the hive

24
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
because it weakens
the immune system of the bees,

25
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and it makes them more vulnerable
to stress and disease.

26
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Now, bees are the most sensitive

27
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
when they're developing
inside their brood cells,

28
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and I wanted to know
what that process really looks like,

29
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
so I teamed up with a bee lab at UC Davis

30
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and figured out how to raise bees
in front of a camera.

31
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I'm going to show you
the first 21 days of a bee's life

32
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
condensed into 60 seconds.

33
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
This is a bee egg
as it hatches into a larva,

34
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and those newly hatched larva

35
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
swim around their cells

36
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
feeding on this white goo

37
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that nurse bees secrete for them.

38
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Then, their head and their legs

39
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
slowly differentiate

40
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
as they transform into pupae.

41
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Here's that same pupation process,

42
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and you can actually see the mites
running around in the cells.

43
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Then the tissue in their body reorganizes

44
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and the pigment slowly
develops in their eyes.

45
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The last step of the process

46
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is their skin shrivels up

47
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and they sprout hair.

48
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
(Music)

49
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So -- (Applause)

50
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So as you can see
halfway through that video,

51
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the mites were running around
on the baby bees,

52
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and the way that beekeepers
typically manage these mites

53
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is they treat their hives with chemicals.

54
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
In the long run, that's bad news,

55
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
so researchers are working
on finding alternatives

56
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to control these mites.

57
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
This is one of those alternatives.

58
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It's an experimental breeding program
at the USDA Bee Lab in Baton Rouge,

59
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and this queen and her attendant bees
are part of that program.

60
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Now, the researchers figured out

61
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that some of the bees have
a natural ability to fight mites,

62
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
so they set out to breed
a line of mite-resistant bees.

63
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
This is what it takes
to breed bees in a lab.

64
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The virgin queen is sedated

65
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and then artificially inseminated
using this precision instrument.

66
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Now, this procedure allows the researchers

67
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to control exactly
which bees are being crossed,

68
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but there's a tradeoff
in having this much control.

69
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
They succeeded in breeding
mite-resistant bees,

70
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but in that process, those bees
started to lose traits

71
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
like their gentleness

72
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and their ability to store honey,

73
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
so to overcome that problem,

74
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
these researchers are now collaborating
with commercial beekeepers.

75
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
This is Bret Adee opening
one of his 72,000 bee hives.

76
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
He and his brother run the largest
beekeeping operation in the world,

77
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and the USDA is integrating

78
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
their mite-resistant bees

79
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
into his operation

80
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
with the hope that over time,
they'll be able to select

81
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the bees that are not only mite-resistant

82
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but also retain all of these qualities

83
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that make them useful to us.

84
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And to say it like that

85
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
makes it sound like we're manipulating
and exploiting bees,

86
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and the truth is, we've been doing that
for thousands of years.

87
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We took this wild creature

88
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and put it inside of a box,

89
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
practically domesticating it,

90
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and originally that was
so that we could harvest their honey,

91
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but over time we started losing
our native pollinators,

92
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
our wild pollinators,

93
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and there are many places now
where those wild pollinators

94
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
can no longer meet the pollination
demands of our agriculture,

95
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
so these managed bees have become
an integral part of our food system.

96
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So when people talk about saving bees,

97
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
my interpretation of that

98
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is we need to save
our relationship to bees,

99
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and in order to design new solutions,

100
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
we have to understand
the basic biology bees

101
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and understand the effects

102
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
of stressors that we sometimes cannot see.

103
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
In other words, we have
to understand bees up close.

104
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Thank you.

105
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
(Applause)