Bees don’t lie, says Bach Kim Nguyen, who wrote his PhD dissertation on the reasons behind bee colony collapses and co-founded BeeOdiversity in 2012 to create unique data sets that can help save the bees.

Bees all work together to support the hive. Each of the 50,000 bees in a colony have a role to play. “They’re a good model for us,” he says.

And of course, bees are essential for our food supply. Of the 100 crop species that provide 90% of food worldwide, 71 are pollinated by bees, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.