Do we still need to save the bees?

Around 15 years ago, a slogan began to appear on bumper stickers, license plate holders, and tote bags: Save the bees. The sense that these pollinators—and the food system they support—were in critical condition was all-pervasive. In 2014, an online poll in the UK found that respondents ranked the decline of bees as a more serious environmental threat than climate change.

But do we still need to save the bees?

The answer is complicated: The public began worrying about bees at a time when western honeybees were dying in alarming numbers from a mysterious syndrome,…