> Bees pollinate most of the world’s wild plant species and provide economically valuable pollination services to crops; yet knowledge of bee conservation biology lags far behind other taxa such as vertebrates and plants. There are few long-termdata on bee populations, whichmakes their conservation status difficult to assess. The best-studied groups are the genus Bombus (the bumble bees), and bees in the EU generally; both of these are clearly declining.

> The bumble bees (the genus Bombus) are the best-studied bee taxon and the only taxon that has been globally assessed for its endangerment status. Eleven percent of Bombus species should probably be listed as “near threatened” or above by IUCN.56 How- ever, only one species is currently listed, because the others lack the documentation required by IUCN.  For example, B. affinis, which was once common across much of eastern North America, disappeared from 42 of 43 sites between the early 1970s and mid 2000s  

> Insect conservation generally lags far behind insects’ functional and numerical importance, and bees largely share the fate of other insects in this regard. Insects account for an estimated 73% of the animal species on earth, yet only 5–20% of insect species have even been named, much less had their natural history described. Only 70 insect species have been recorded as going extinct to date, but several lines of evidence suggest that this number reflects our inadequate knowledge more than it reflects reality.

May 2010. ANNALS OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
Issue: The Year in Ecology and Conservation Biology
The conservation and restoration of wild bees
Rachael Winfree

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