Tag: Pollinators

Finding Out More About Native Bees

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
When people think about bees, it’s often honeybees that come to mind. Native to Eurasia, honeybees pollinate apple, peach and almond trees, watermelons, cucumbers, and many other food crops. In many areas, beekeepers take to the highway with their colonies, traveling to whatever crop is blooming and in need of pollination. “Honeybees are an agricultural…  More 

Tracking Bees on Experimental Forests

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
At first sight, the nine plastic cups in a grassy yard at Bent Creek Experimental Forest don’t look like part of a nationwide monitoring survey. But the cups are actually simple bee traps, and a number of U.S. Forest Service facilities are part of a network of bee monitoring stations that stretch across the country.…  More 

Removing Privet Helps Restore Native Bee Populations

by Sarah Farmer, Science Delivery Group  • 
When plants travel the world, they escape the checks and balances of their ancestral ecosystems and can multiply without bounds, competing with native plants for light, nutrients, and water. Do non-native invasive plants also disrupt native bee populations? Jim Hanula, research entomologist with the SRS Insects, Diseases and Invasive Plants unit, explored this question by comparing bee…  More