Honey bees really aren't in any difficulty regardless of what we read every day. The vast majority are farmed like any other creature being exploited in every imaginable manner to extract as much money from them as possible.

However there are bees that really are in decline in France and they are most, jf not all, of the approximately 874 bee species that fall into the broad categories of Bumble bees and Solitary Bees that require a multitude of different habitats for their specific life cycles. This makes them extremely vulnerable to habitat loss, climate chaos and agricultural practices that are resulting in their decline and local extinctions. Many emerge for a short specific period of time each year in which they mate, lay their eggs and die, not to be seen again until the same time the following year.

It should be obvious to most people when their attention is drawn to it that any living creature that requires an undisturbed soil structure throughout the year can not possibly survive in a landscape that is regularly ploughed, turned over and doused with pesticides of all types. Sadly the amount of land in France that is subjected to this increases year after year as we demand more and more from the land, be that for human consumption, crops for the animal feed-stuff industry, bio-fuels and most recently for alternatives to replace plastic.

It is also the case that Pasture as it is increasingly being managed for livestock is not much better as we replace sparse, natural meadows with non native species that create unsuitable habitat for ground nesting bees and ground nesting birds.