The pollinators 
View this short film on pollinators from the TED Talks by clicking on the above link (The pollinators).

For some years now, we have been wondering where our bees have gone.  Without these crucial pollinators our food supply will go the way of the bees.  Farmers are finding all of their bees dead after planting their corn and don't know why.  The culprits are the pesticides and fungicides used on the plants.  They are toxic to the bees and are killing them off in the millions.  According to the manufacturers of these deadly products, they are not supposed to kill beneficial insects.

However, the world over, honey bees and Bumble bees are disappearing from farms, fields and flowers where they once teemed in abundance.  Whole colonies are decimated on farms and farmers have to ship in bees to pollinate their plants.  Many of these bees are also not surviving.

According to NPR:  "...chemicals are absorbed by the growing corn or canola plants and transported throughout its roots, leaves, and even it's nectar and pollen.  This makes the entire plant poisonous to lots of insects that feed on it, from root-gnawing worms to sap-sucking aphids."

A major contributor found to be killing off the bees is a nicotinoid insecticide.  In a study in the U.K., bumblebees exposed to nicotinoids did not die but almost completely stopped making new queen bees.  A study in France, using the same nicotinoid reported that the bees never returned to their home hives.

Honey bees are important to our own survival because  approximately 1/3 of all food we eat is pollinated by bees.  If a major part of our food supply dies out, so do we.