You’ve probably heard the phrase: “Save the bees.” But new research suggests we may need to be more specific about which bees we’re saving.

Europeans introduced western honeybees (Apis mellifera L.) to the Americas in the early 1600s. They play an essential role in pollinating crops and flowering plants, and are often hailed as the “unsung heroes of our planet.” They are both omnivorous and omnipresent: Researchers have found that western honeybees visit more plant species than any other species of pollinator and are the most common visitor to plants in non-managed habitats worldwide, accounting for nearly 13% of all floral visitors.

The problem is that this dominance may be coming at the cost of some native pollinators.

That’s what caught the attention of Joshua Kohn, a former biology professor at UC San Diego. “Pollination biologists in general in North America tend to ignore western honeybees because they’re not native,” he said. “But when I saw just how abundant they were, I thought to myself: They’re not just a nuisance, they’re the story.”

In San Diego County — a global bee biodiversity hotspot — feral honeybee populations have quietly exploded in number since the late 1960s. Many of these bees trace their ancestry to a hybrid of European and African subspecies, the latter known for traits that boost survival in hot, dry climates — places with mild winters and vegetation that blooms year-round. In other words, perfect for Southern California, where previously domesticated populations became feral colonies that thrived independent of human management, nesting in rock crevices, abandoned rodent burrows and other natural cavities.

However, despite their population growth and spread, researchers don’t know much about these bees’ pollen consumption, or the extent to which their foraging habits may be displacing native species.

A new study published July 7 in the journal Insect Conservation and Diversity seeks to address that knowledge gap. Drawing from field surveys in San Diego’s coastal scrubland, researchers at UC San Diego found that feral honeybees — non-native, unmanaged descendants of domesticated bees — may be monopolizing local ecosystems and effectively squeezing out native pollinators such as bumblebees. In total, these feral bees now comprise about 90% of all bees in the area, according to the study.

“It’s like going to the Amazon rainforest to bird-watch and seeing only pigeons,” said James Hung, an ecologist at the University of Oklahoma and co-author of the study. “I was shocked. This was supposed to be a biodiversity hotspot — but all we were seeing were honeybees.”

The team also wanted to understand how honeybee foraging affected pollen availability for native species, and what that might mean for the latter’s ability to reproduce successfully. The researchers looked at how honeybees interacted with three native plants: black sage, white sage and distant phacelia. They found that in just two visits, a western honeybee could remove more than 60% of the pollen from these flowers. By the end of a single day for all three plant species analyzed, more than 80% of all pollen was gone.

The problem is that this leaves almost no pollen for native bees.

Kohn, a co-author of the study, explained that while western honeybees are prolific foragers, they aren’t always the most effective pollinators. His previous research suggests plants pollinated by these bees often produce less fit offspring, in part due to inbreeding. This is because western honeybees tend to visit many flowers on the same plant before moving on — a behavior that increases the risk of self-fertilization.

What this means for the broader plant community is still unclear, Kohn said. “But it’s likely that the offspring of plants would be more fit if they were pollinated by native pollinators. It’s possible that if honeybees were not in the system that there’d be more bumblebees, which visit flowering plants much more methodically.”

Kohn emphasized that the findings aren’t an argument against honeybee conservation, especially given their importance to agriculture. However, they do suggest we may need to reconsider how to manage domesticated western honeybee populations.

When used for agricultural pollination, managed honeybees are often brought into an area temporarily in what’s called a mobile apiary: essentially, dozens or hundreds of hives kept on a trailer or platform, moved from place to place, wherever pollination is needed. While this is essential for crops, stripping nectaring plants of resources before native species have a chance to feed could lead to their decimation.

Hung suggested designating specific forage zones for commercial beekeeping — ideally in areas less vulnerable to ecological disruption — as a way to offset that pressure. “If we can identify ecosystems that are less sensitive to disturbance — those with a lower number of endemic plant or pollinator species — we could scatter seed mixes and produce way more flowers than any comparable habitat nearby,” he said. “Then, we could set aside some acres of land for beekeepers to come and park their bees and let them forage in a way that does not disrupt the native ecosystem. This would address the conflict between large-scale managed honeybee populations and the wild bees that they could potentially be impacting.”

Rather than replacing crop pollination, the idea would be to offer alternative foraging options that keep honeybees from spilling into and dominating natural areas.

Longer-term, Hung said scientists may need to consider more direct forms of intervention, such as relocation or eradication. “Honeybees have dug their roots very deep into our ecosystem, so removing them is going to be a big challenge,” he said. But at some point, he believes, it may be necessary to protect native plants and pollinators.

In the words of Scott Black, director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, “Keeping honeybees to ‘save the bees’ is like raising chickens to save birds.”

Patrick Golling yanked the pull cord, and the Honda engine roared to life. Seconds after it began sucking water out of his father’s pool, a powerful stream erupted from an agricultural irrigation nozzle fixed atop a bright red pole a few feet away, connected with a fire hose.

In a minute flat, the system meticulously jerked across the landscape, drenching the ravine in 50 gallons of water. The demonstration on a hot July afternoon left the blackened sticks below the property — once trees before the Palisades fire ripped through — dripping with chlorinated water.

The contraption is the brainchild of Golling and Arizona engineer Tony Robinson. After a TV interview where Golling discussed a cobbled-together version of the tech that he says saved his father’s home from the Palisades fire, Robinson cold-called him, and Realize Safety was born.

Now, the two talk of ambitious visions where entire neighborhoods living amid California’s rugged brush-covered landscapes band together to create a community defense network of automated firefighters.

Their system is the latest entrant in a growing group of often-expensive, high-tech sprinkler systems designed to protect homes in high fire hazard areas. But while a blue-ribbon commission after the January fires recommended L.A. adopt exterior sprinkler technology, some fire officials warn there’s limited evidence that these elaborate and flashy systems work.

Instead, they say the systems distract from less-glamorous but proven measures to protect homes, such as brush clearance and multipaned windows, while encouraging residents to risk their lives by staying back during an evacuation to protect their homes.

“Good solutions don’t pop up overnight,” said David Barrett, executive director of the Los Angeles Regional Fire Safe Council. “There is no silver bullet.”

Especially for a vicious blaze such as the Palisades fire. Given the extreme weather conditions — winds over 80 mph, incredibly dry vegetation — there was very little firefighters, let alone home defense systems, could do, Barrett said.

“It doesn’t matter what you’ve got in your pool,” he said. “Nothing is going to stop an urban wildfire from progressing if it’s wind-driven — sorry. That’s the end.”

Asked whether the system saved his father’s home, Golling did not mince words: “Absolutely.”

Patrick Golling of Realize Safety adjusts the nozzle on one of the company’s defenders.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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After Golling got word of a fire developing in the Palisades on Jan. 7, he immediately thought of the gas pump and irrigation sprinkler system his father had bought just months before to protect his home in the Palisades Highlands. Golling rushed to his father’s house and spent the next two days deploying the system throughout the neighborhood, putting out spot fires that threatened the development. Golling said firefighters encouraged him to keep up the work as they struggled to contain monster blazes one neighborhood over.

As the smoke settled, most of Golling’s neighborhood remained standing.

But little data exist on the effectiveness of home defense sprinklers.

Wildfire researchers often use large datasets of destroyed and standing homes after devastating fires to compare the success of the various home hardening strategies they used. But scientists have yet to identify and analyze fires where sprinkler systems were widely used.

Some anecdotal evidence has suggested that these systems provide some protection. An analysis of the 2007 Ham Lake fire in Minnesota found that of 47 homes identified with functioning sprinkler systems, all but one survived. Meanwhile, only about 40% of the 48 homes without the systems remained standing after the fire.

Typical home defense sprinkler systems work by drawing water from utility systems, and using it to wet the exterior of a house and create — at least theoretically — another barrier from fire. Realize Safety’s goal is to prevent the fire from even reaching the house by dousing nearby vegetation in water and creating a mist to dampen any embers that could ignite the home. To do it, they’re tapping into an underutilized source of water: pools.

Barrett said that, without a doubt, firefighters could put pool water to better use than these systems. Firefighters, he said, already have all the equipment they need to utilize pool water, and all residents have to do is install a clear sign out front letting firefighters know they have a pool.

But as Golling looked at the view of the Palisades from his father’s backyard in early July, he counted eight destroyed homes with still-full pools.

“We think — that had they had a system in place like the one we’re talking about — they could have saved their homes,” Golling said.

Utility water sources are not designed to handle large-scale urban fires. During the Palisades fire, the chief engineer for the city’s water utility told The Times that the system saw four times the normal water demand for 15 hours straight.

It’s in part why, when an independent 20-member Blue Ribbon Commission on Climate Action and Fire-Safe Recovery recently issued dozens of recommendations for rebuilding and recovery, it called for prioritizing additional water storage capacity in neighborhoods and encouraging the development of standards for and the installation of systems that draw on water stored in pools or cisterns, with external sprinklers to douse homes.

Using a 20,000-gallon pool, Realize Safety’s system can run for over six hours straight. And unlike many traditional water defense sprinklers, it is not dependent on the house having electricity and access to utility water systems.

Reliability is paramount for Robinson, who has spent much of his engineering career working on airplanes and satellites — where failure is synonymous with catastrophe.

The same is true for wildfire defense. In the Ham Lake fire, the researchers also counted nine residences where home defense sprinklers failed. Eight of them burned.

Realize Safety’s system pulls water from residential pools, a widely untapped source of water during urban fires.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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In the quest for reliability, Golling and Robinson have made significant improvements on the unwieldy system Golling used in January (where, after some time, the generator cart rattled itself straight into the pool it was drawing water from). With a sturdy generator cart and sprinklers that are firmly anchored into the ground, the two are confident that residents can trust it long after they’ve evacuated.

But Barrett credits success stories such as Golling’s not to specific technology, but instead to the dangerous practice of ignoring an evacuation order to protect a house. He worries systems such as Realize Safety’s — that essentially give residents all the tools they need to try their hand at firefighting instead of evacuating — could encourage more people to stay behind, as Golling did.

“The problem with that is people then stay behind putting their lives and the lives of firefighters at risk, when they’re not trained in firefighting,” he said.

A comprehensive 2019 study from fire researcher Alexandra Syphard found that, in previous Southern California wildfires, a civilian staying behind to protect a house reduced the chance of a home burning by 32% — more than every other factor studied, including defensible space, concrete roofs and even the presence of the fire department at the property. (The study did not evaluate the effectiveness of sprinkler systems, which were not widely used in the fires analyzed.)

However, fire officials across the state — in no unclear terms — strongly discourage this practice. It endangers human life, and when a manageable fire fight suddenly becomes unmanageable for a homeowner, rescue efforts can redirect essential resources that are desperately needed elsewhere.

Some fire safety advocates also worry flashy and unproven tech could distract from well-tested home-hardening methods, such as clearing flammable debris from the yard and roof.

Barrett recalled visiting a house about a year ago to inspect the resident’s home-hardening efforts and provide feedback.

“The person had spent $50,000 on a sprinkler system, but he had overgrown branches hanging onto his roof and the rain gutters were all full of needles,” he said. Barrett’s blunt personal assessment: “This house is going to burn down.”

“Chopping those branches and clearing the needles out would have cost $1,000 or less,” he said.

Golling and Robinson say they’re focused on providing the cheapest, most reliable tech they can. They see their home defenders as another, relatively affordable, tool in the arsenal to increase the odds their customers’ homes survive a fire.

A fully operational, autonomous system starts at $3,450, which Golling said is cheaper than what he spends on defensible-space lawn maintenance in some years.

“We did the brush clearance. We have the water pump. We’re going to do the ember-resistant vents and home hardening,” Golling said. “You’ve got to really do it all.”

Times staff writer Ian James contributed to this report.

Amy Kane was filled with dread when she heard that the national suicide prevention lifeline would stop offering specialized crisis intervention to young LGBTQ+ Americans and end its partnership with the West Hollywood-based Trevor Project.

With the service set to end July 17, Kane, a therapist who identifies as lesbian, believes the Trump administration is sending a clear message to queer Americans: “We don’t care whether you live or die.”

Since it launched in 2022, more than 1.3 million queer young Americans struggling with a mental health crisis have dialed the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which gave them the option to press “3” to connect with a specialist trained to address their unique life experiences. As the largest of seven LGBTQ+ contractors, the Trevor Project alone handles about half of all volume from queer callers to the 988 line.

The government’s decision is yet another broadside from an administration whose actions have left queer public health advocates and providers reeling, including at the Los Angeles LGBTQ Center, where Kane serves as director of mental health services.

Under pressure from the Trump administration, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles sent letters to families in early June saying it planned to suspend its healthcare program for transgender children and young adults in late July. The LGBTQ Center and other groups have demanded that the hospital reconsider.

Around the same time came the news about the 988 line and the Trevor Project, a nonprofit founded in 1998 by the makers of the Academy Award-winning short film “Trevor” — about a teen who attempts suicide — to address the absence of a major prevention network tailored to the needs of queer youth.

“So much has been thrown our way in the last five months,” Kane said. “It’s across the board. It’s not just mental health. We see what’s happening with gender-affirming care, dramatic cuts in research for HIV and STIs. … What’s next?”

Given L.A.’s status as a haven for LGBTQ+ people — the first permitted Pride parade took place in Hollywood in 1970 — Kane wonders whether the recent moves are an attempt to intimidate and punish Californians for being so welcoming.

The threats aren’t just coming from Washington. Kane said that she and other leaders had to lobby state legislators recently to preserve funding for a queer women’s preventive-healthcare program offered through the L.A. LGBTQ Center that was to be revoked due to a state budget shortfall. For now, the program has been given a temporary reprieve.

“It used to be this idea of, ‘Oh yeah, that’s in the red states, but I’m safe in California’ — it doesn’t feel that way anymore,” Kane said.

Staff members at the Trevor Project are scrambling to figure out how to save the jobs of about 200 counselors who are paid through the federal contract, including raising private funds to make up for the unexpected shortfall, said Mark Henson, interim vice president of advocacy and government affairs. The news couldn’t come at a worse time, given that calls nationwide are on pace to top 700,000 in 2025. That’s up from 600,000 in 2024, a spokesperson said, citing metrics from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Another 100 crisis counselors are employed and paid separately by the Trevor Project itself. They will continue taking calls through the project’s own 24/7, free crisis line, one of several options that local LGBTQ+ organizations offer. Los Angeles County’s Alternative Crisis Response has a 24/7 helpline at (800) 854-7771 that also provides culturally sensitive support services.

But Alex Boyd, the Trevor Project’s director of crisis intervention, said he isn’t sure how his organization can make up for the loss of the nationwide visibility and federal support that the 988 partnership affords them.

LGBTQ+ young people are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers, according to the Trevor Project. Its 2024 survey found that in California, 35% of LGBTQ+ young people seriously considered taking their own lives and that 11% of respondents had attempted suicide in the previous year.

In defending the decision to stop working with the Trevor Project at a House budget hearing in May, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that while Trump supports the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in general, “We don’t want to isolate different demographics and polarize our country.”

The big question, Boyd said, is will young LGBTQ+ Americans who already feel shunned or misunderstood still trust a suicide prevention line that no longer offers counselors they can easily relate to?

A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work when it comes to people in emotional and mental distress, Boyd said.

He fears the worst.

“The fact that such a significant amount of our capacity for impact has now been stripped away — there is no operational way in order to navigate through a moment like this that doesn’t result, in at least the short term, in a loss of life.”

Counselors at the Trevor Project hear the anguish over the anti-LGBTQ+ backlash in the voices of young callers seeking help through the lifeline, Boyd said. “The statements we are hearing are: ‘Our government doesn’t support me. The government is actively erasing my experience from the national conversation.’ ”

“Increasingly, the biggest thread that we see from young people reaching out to us is this idea that it is already difficult to be a young person in the world — this is another layer that we’re adding onto children’s lives,” Boyd said. “They’re coming to us saying they’re not sure how they’re going to be able to navigate through more years of this before they get some level of autonomy and agency and find some sense of safety.”

Along with a host of executive actions signed by the president, thousands of bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community have been introduced in state legislatures, in cities and in school districts in California and around the country, including calls to ban books that mention same-sex relationships and gender identity, remove the Pride flag from government buildings and kick trans athletes off of sports teams.

Adding to the strain on the queer community, Trump’s self-described “Big Beautiful Bill,” recently passed in both houses in Congress, cuts public health funding for low-income Americans who receive Medicaid. LGBTQ+ Americans are twice as likely to rely on Medicaid to receive their health care than other Americans, said Alexandra Curd, a staff policy attorney at the national advocacy group Lambda Legal.

Over 40% of nonelderly U.S. adults living with HIV depend on the federal program for their healthcare needs compared to 15% for the general population, according to KFF. Many recipients rely nonprofit organizations funded by federal grants to get HIV and STI screenings and receive HIV prevention medications such as PREP and PEP, Curd said.

Because of the Medicaid cuts and the prospect of increased difficulty in accessing preventive care and emotional support, “We’re going to possibly be seeing rising infections rates for HIV,” she said.

Curd said a recent spike in HIV rates among Latino men could only worsen. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials have cited a lack of adequate funding, racial bias, language barriers and mistrust of the medical system among the reasons that gay and bisexual Latino men account for a disproportionate percentage of new HIV cases.

Lambda Legal’s help desk has already received more requests for assistance with health care, employment and housing discrimination in the first half of 2025 than in all of 2024, with the most pressing need coming from trans and nonbinary callers.

One piece of good news for L.A. came recently when Rep. Laura Friedman (D–West Hollywood) announced that the Trump administration had restored more than $19 million in federal grants for HIV and STI prevention and tracking that were earmarked for the L.A. County Department of Public Health but slashed by the CDC. Friedman said she and others spoke out against the cut were able to secure an extra $338,019 in federal funding for the new fiscal year starting June 1.

But it’s hard for healthcare organizations to celebrate given that vital funds for mental health and HIV programs were targeted in the first place.

Manny Zermeño, a behavioral health specialist at the Long Beach office of another queer community service organization, APLA Health, senses the distress in his clients. “There is fear, sadness and also with those feelings, it’s natural to have some anger and confusion,” Zermeño said.

The L.A.-based nonprofit focuses on providing free and affordable dental, medical, counseling and other services for queer people 18 and over. It was founded in 1982 as AIDS Project Los Angeles. Back then, a small team of volunteers worked a telephone hotline in the closet of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbians Community Service Center, fielding calls from panicked residents seeking answers about what was then a fatal disease for which there was no treatment.

The organization operated the first dental clinic in the U.S. catering to AIDS patients out of a trailer in West Hollywood. After movie star Rock Hudson announced he had AIDS in 1985, the organization galvanized support among Angelenos by hosting the first-ever AIDS Walk fundraiser at Paramount Studios, according to its website.

Kane and leaders of other community organizations in L.A. said they would rally once again, this time to assist the Trevor Project.

“All of us who have boots on the ground — you’ll literally have to drag us out by our ankles in order to not provide care to our community,” Kane said. “I don’t believe that queer kids will not have access to resources, because we won’t allow it.”