It's Starting to Kill All the Bees in the U.S... And No One Saw It Coming.

Somewhere across the western United States lives one of the strangest bees in America. It doesn't make honey. It doesn't build a colony. Instead, it survives by invading the nests of other bumblebees, overpowering or killing their queens, and forcing an entire colony to raise offspring that aren't even their own. By almost every measure, this sounds like exactly the kind of insect people would want to eliminate. And yet, the United States is considering giving it one of the highest levels of legal protection available under federal law. At first glance, that decision makes no sense. Why would a country whose food supply depends on healthy pollinators choose to protect a bee that attacks other bees? Why would farmers, scientists, and even utility companies suddenly care about a tiny parasite? The answer has very little to do with the parasite itself. As scientists studied this tiny bee, they uncovered something much bigger: a chain reaction involving modern agriculture, disappearing wildlife, and commercial beekeeping. And by the end of this story, the decision to protect this bee won't seem nearly as surprising as it does now.