# 1314: Bees | Skeptical Sunday

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Podcast: [The Jordan Harbinger Show](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-jordan-harbinger-show-546263)
Published: 2026-04-19T07:00:00+00:00
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Duration seconds: 4288

## Resource

In the grand scheme, bees bring way more to the table than honey — so why are they vanishing? Jessica Wynn combs through the data on Skeptical Sunday! Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of  The Jordan Harbinger Show  where  Jordan and a guest break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. This time around, we’re joined by writer and researcher  Jessica Wynn ! Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1314 On This Week's Skeptical Sunday: Honeybees aren't even native to North America — they're European imports from the 1600s, essentially livestock with wings. Meanwhile, the 20,000+ species of wild and solitary bees that actually belong here are losing habitat and quietly heading toward extinction , largely unnoticed. The waggle dance isn't just a cute party trick — it's a Nobel Prize-winning symbolic language bees use to communicate precise GPS coordinates through choreography. And in 2023, scientists discovered it's culturally transmitted, not instinctual, meaning some colonies are literally better dancers because they had better teachers. Every winter, 54 billion bees are trucked into California's Central Valley to pollinate almonds — woken from dormancy, fed stimulants, crammed into monoculture diets, and exposed to pesticides that scramble their navigation. The system that feeds us is simultaneously dismantling the workforce it depends on. Colony Collapse Disorder — where entire forager populations vanish without a trace, no bodies, no explanation — is the bee equivalent of a Mary Celeste mystery. The leading theory is a perfect storm: parasitic varroa mites, neurotoxic pesticides that cause bees to forget how to get home, malnutrition, and the chr…

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