Each year, as summer reaches its height, the honeybee faces a quiet crisis invisible to most human eyes — more effort, less reward, and a landscape that has grown suddenly sparse. Researchers at the University of Sussex have now measured this seasonal paradox with precision, documenting how late July and August represent the most energetically costly and least productive foraging period across the entire active season. The findings, drawn from observations of over a thousand bees across Brighton and Edinburgh, suggest that the plants we most readily dismiss as weeds may hold the key to sustain