Share Placing his bare hands into a swarm of thousands of bees, a Malaysian man named Ooi Leng Chye uses his fingers to gently guide some of them into a rattan basket. Ooi Leng Chye is a member of a group that saves bees and their nests when they are discovered in cities, seeking to prevent the creatures from being destroyed by those who view them as pests. Bees play a vital role in ecosystems as pollinators of major crops, but their numbers have been falling rapidly due to habitat loss, pollution and pesticides.The United Nations warns that 40 percent of invertebrate pollinators — in particular bees and butterflies — risk global extinction.