Life is getting sweeter for bee farmers

Villagers have seen living standards rise after they began raising and protecting the insects, which pollinate plants and also protect biodiversity. Yang Wanli reports from Kunming.

Bees are a tiny but vitally important species for planet Earth.

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, almost 90 percent of the globe's wild plants depend on insects to be pollinated, along with 75 percent of leading crops worldwide.

Bees account for a large number of pollinators. However, in an increasingly modern and industrialized world, the insects face many complex, interacting threats.

In addition to climate change, one of the deadliest threats to the bee population comes from humans in the form of pesticides and the expansion of residential areas, which is leading to a loss of habitat.

In China, the indigenous species, the eastern honey bee (Apis cerana), is one of the most-threatened families, according to Kuang Haiou, an expert with the Apis cerana Research Institute at Yunnan Agricultural University.

Kuang said the eastern honey bee is also threatened by the western honey bee (Apis mellifera), an invasive species that was widely introduced for crop pollination purposes in the 1930s.

"Unlike the eastern honey bee, which pollinates various plants with scanty levels of distribution, the western honey bee is accustomed to focusing on single crop flowers. That's why the eastern honey bee plays a more crucial role in maintaining the ecosystem," Kuang said.

In addition, western honey bees are larger than their eastern counterparts, which can easily be driven out of their original habitats.