an experiment even though he's not an organic farmer marcus marshall has a keen interest in bees. he has bee hives on his property and has set up what are called flower buffer strips. his orchards appear to be thriving so is he affected by declining insect populations. the other suitable being here it's a problem for me i depend on nature and we need insects and the birds need them to fit them all nor for the gods of. what would happen if insects were to die off completely. if the bees were to disappear. alexandra maria klein is hoping to find out more with an ingenious experiment if you have a. that's why for 5 trees that's all we need that they're going to wrap several apple trees these water pipes will serve as scaffolding for the net the fall off with the money. and if. it's a bit improvised sure but we want this to be quick and easy on the kid of course of course over the previous. sort of this ordeal and. next comes the net. it will keep insects away from the blossoms on this small group of trees. the trees already have netting on them to protect them from hail now they're g

for marcus marshall that's a financial loss. the low quality apples yielded by hand pollination have shown that it's not a viable alternative. and hence pollination is far too labor intensive for. them and if you want to do it right you need a lot of experience and. there's no way we can pollinate by hand any idea who would even do it. now comes the moment of truth what happened to the trees that were completely cut off from insects alexander klein is surprised there are a few rather large apples here. kind of kana there are no seeds the bees weren't here and they didn't pollinate are no seeds also affects the apples nutritional profile so this would be a big change which one i'm nothing. without b.s. the quality of apples would suffer. klein says the lack of seed would be a serious problem for the trees would not be able to reproduce isn't there big with a different nutritional profile and wouldn't withstand storage and there aren't enough of them so we can't do without insects they're irreplaceable. to fill in a major advocate

that pollination is crucial for fruit farming so as marcus marshall wright can orchards thrive even without bees. alexander family a climber and her students continue on to a place with a wealth of insect biodiversity romania is europe's last remaining paradise for insects. in. this part of transylvania is pristine almost untouched. for meshaal let's find a spot for our 1st session it's pretty windy so maybe down there in. the team are looking forward to what they'll find. yet come for we mainly come to romania because in a very short time we find a wide diversity of species of the same species we have at home but it takes a lot longer to find that out than slang it out of. here on the hillside each student is observing an area of about 3 by 3 meters for 30 minutes at a time they try to catch and record all the insects they see. she'd graze on the matter i was in this part of romania that's also good for the insect population. then the students find something special i'm off caterpillar a lovely creature it will mature into a spur talk moth. consequence we can try to feed it to death and. l