Humans and the social bees have a long and complex history. Part of this mutual admiration comes from the mirror that these social insects hold up to us. In some tribes, there is a belief that we live in a world that has been destroyed and renewed multiple times, and that man inherited this mantle, most recently, from the social bees and wasps, who were punished by the gods because they fell into social discord. So, here we are, the top of the heap, the big Kahuna, a Napoleonic prince, so to speak, that bestrides the world and uses the golden bee as a symbol of industry, and social unity. Give us our daily bread and honey. Bees are clearly important.

We have taken from the bees for thousands of years, as this Neolithic cave painting shows and continue, in many places, to harvest honey and precious bees wax as we have done for millennia. We have even buried nobles and princes, most famously Alexander the Great, in white honey, an excellent preservative.

But can we preserve this relationship? Perhaps we have taken the bees for granted for too long. Dr. James C. Nieh was born in Taiwan and grew up in Southern California. He received his B.A. at Harvard in 1991 and his PhD from Cornell University in 1997. He subsequently received an NSF-NATO Postdoctoral fellowship to study at the University of Würzburg in Germany. After this, he received the prestigious Harvard Junior Fellowship. In 2000, he joined the faculty in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of California San Diego where he is currently a professor in the Section of Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution. Dr. Nieh’s interests focus on bee communication, cognition, and health. He studies many types of social bees, including honey bees, bumble bees, and stingless bees. His lab studies natural and man-made stressors of social bees. A major part of his work focuses on foraging and communication in honey bees and honey bee health. The research on honey bee health focuses on how pesticides alter honey bee behavior and learning, how a common pathogen, Nosema ceranae, infects bees and alters their behavior, how honey bee immunity can be boosted to fight Nosema infection, and how the bee gut microbiome may help us find new ways to counter Nosema infection. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx