A documentary from the French-language YouTube channel Science Bestiale titled How bumblebees conquered the world, traces the 120-million-year story of bees - from their origins as carnivorous wasps that turned vegetarian, to the emergence of today's 20,000 known species. The documentary features WildPosh coordinator Denis Michez and his lab at the University of Mons.

The documentary follows the evolutionary path of bees from the first winged insects of the Primary era, through the emergence of flowering plants roughly 120 million years ago, which began bees' partnership with flowers: nectar and pollen in exchange for pollination. It explains how researchers date this origin using molecular clocks and amber fossils, and traces the later emergence of highly social species. Then, the feature turns to bumblebees - a group that split off from other bees during a period of global cooling and adapted to survive in cold climates thanks to their thick fur and warm-blooded physiology.

Michez's lab plays a central role in the second half of the documentary, which discusses the sharp decline of bumblebee populations across Europe. In Belgium alone, only 8 of the 31 bumblebee species recorded in the early 20th century are still commonly observed today.

Luce Gay, a PhD student in Michez's team, discusses how bumblebees rely on chemical communication to coordinate life within the colony - and how factors like heat waves and pesticides are disrupting these signals.

The documentary also features bumblebee specialist Pierre Rasmont (University of Mons), who founded the lab now led by Michez, discussing the group's spread from Central Asia to the Arctic and its remarkable, though little-known, adaptations to extreme cold.

The documentary already has almost 70,000 views.

Watch the full documentary.