Here is an example of what it looks like when bees are wiped out. 

> In two small counties in Sichuan, one neighboring Yingjing, the use of pesticides had so devastated bee populations that all the pears and apples were pollinated by hand. Land reform in the mid-1950s enforced the formation of rural farm collectives. The counties of Maoxian and Hangyuan were planted heavily with pears and apples, approximately 280,000 trees. In the 1980s, another round of reforms, called the Household Responsibility System, returned the production responsibilities and benefits to individual families. 

> Because the plot sizes were small (approximately one-third of an acre per family), people wanted maximum yield. Until the mid-1980s, no hand pollination was used because insect pollination was sufficient. The locals say that in the early 1980s, a plague of fruit lice came through, which required heavy doses of pesticides. At that point, a regular practice of pesticide use began, which continues today. On average, farmers in these regions as recently as 2012 were applying pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides, seven to eight times a year. The heavy pesticide use eliminated the honeybees and other native pollinators. The lack of insects forced the villagers to come up with a pollination strategy. Their solution was pollinating by hand.

> Beekeepers were refusing to take their bees into those orchards? This idea was stunning to me. What would happen if beekeepers in the United States and other places in the world simply insisted that farmers shifted their practices?

Swan, H. (2014). Searching for the Bees of Guangxi and Sichuan. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 21(4), 895-905.

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