World Bee Day | Drones in the Sky, Bees Dead on the Ground: Can We Still Happily Enjoy Fruit?

The 20th of May is World Bee Day. Silkworms and honeybees are the only two insects ever domesticated by humankind, and when drones pass overhead, both lie dead by the thousand, strewn across the fields. Having spoken of silkworms, we now turn back to the honeybee – that vital pollinating insect.

China’s agriculture depends on pollinating insects at twice the global average, because the proportion of insect-pollinated crops grown is higher and the variety of produce far richer. Without them, average fruit crop yields in China would drop by 40 per cent, and vegetables by 30. The economic value of yield gains from pollination alone reaches 700 billion yuan – 19 per cent of the country’s total agricultural output value.

As the cost of spraying falls ever further, driven by drone technology and government incentives, the question of whether to spray and how much has become a calculation between pest risk and farmland ecology. Who files the notice, who coordinates, who moves the hives – the relationship between beekeepers and farmers is being redrawn, under the shadow of technology, as a strategic contest.

This episode of Food Talk brings in two guests who have long been devoted to agricultural ecology and entomology research, to discuss:

Why does more spraying lead to more pests? Why are smallholders more wary of drones than large-scale farms? Why are beekeepers increasingly resembling “the nomads of agriculture”? And who should pay for the ecological services bees provide?

And what happens in a world without bees? This conversation is about agriculture, ecology and economics – but also about the sounds of spring that are slowly fading away.

March, the season when rapeseed flowers are in full bloom, should have been the busiest and most hopeful time of the year for beekeepers. Yet this year, after drones swept across the fields, bees in many areas were all but “wiped out”.

It was precisely the critical moment when bees, starving after a long winter, needed to gather nectar. Beekeepers said they had not been notified; even the owners of the rapeseed fields were unaware of what was happening. Central Agricultural Radio explained that the spraying was intended to prevent an outbreak of sclerotinia stem rot this year. On how to conduct “scientific spraying” during the flowering period, Central Agricultural Radio offered a few suggestions.

A tripartite notification system linking beekeepers, village collectives, and crop growers or plant protection organisations was highlighted in particular. But how does this system work in practice? Migratory beekeepers, driving across the country from field to field, face sweeping drone squadrons capable of treating several hundred mu in a single day. How can they avoid being left with no options?

02:44 What does adding 20,000 drones in a single year actually mean?

03:46 Beekeepers have always known the dangers of pesticides

12:03 Bees at service to loquats – bees that lose their way and forget

16:11 After the drones pass, it isn’t only insects caught in the crossfire.

19:30 At a flight height of seven metres, do drones save more pesticide than ground sprayers?

25:02 Some see drones as a lifeline; others feel they are destroying the land.

31:26 The complex ecosystems that once made ‘fighting pests with insects’ possible are being wiped out, too.

35:49 When a whole village finishes spraying in a single day, how are beekeepers supposed to escape? Should the sprayers move away from the bees, or the bees from the sprayers?

45:31 The harder life gets for beekeepers, the more sugar water they feed to their little bees.

56:06 2.5 million insect species – how do you count them? Is Silent Spring growing even more “silent”?

1:03:17 Is there a way to go without pesticides? Dr Zou’s “supply run” to a field trial in Jiangxi where farmers rear insects.

1:10:49 Abroad, farmers are subsidised to sow wildflower strips; here at home, smallholders’ field margins are already brimming with them. The real question is: can we keep them?