The Convention on Biological Diversity, commonly referred to as the Biodiversity Treaty, was one of two major treaties opened for signature at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This treaty was signed by 167 countries - among them the Federal Republic of Germany.

The important Follow-Up Workshop on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Pollinators in Agriculture with Emphasis on Bees takes place in 1999, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The report states that about one-third of the world’s crops demand pollination to set seeds and fruits and the great majority of them are pollinated by many of the estimated 25,000 species of bees. The annual value of this service in the U.S. is calculated at US -8 billion and the estimate worldwide is US -70 billion.

Many of the bee species are currently threatened with extinction. Efforts to preserve and protect the species are currently severely hampered by the difficult taxonomy (classification into groups) and the lack of entomological (insect) specialists who can identify bee specimens.