It was one year ago today that Joe Wilson, Olivia Carril and I published our paper that explores how shrinking and carving up the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument might impact the incredible bee communities that live there. The issues raised in the paper are what took us back to the monument this past summer to continue studying the bees and create our documentary film. Give it a read when you have the chance, it’s open access.
(BBC) There are 180 different types of bees found in Wales. However, seven species have already been wiped out and five more are on the brink of extinction. Others are clinging on, including the large mason bee, found nowhere in the UK other than two sites in the Llyn Peninsula.
(Garden Ecology Lab, Oregon State University) “I am not suggesting that you extinguish honey bees from your garden. What I am asking, instead, is that you take the time to learn about and to notice some of the other 80+ species of bee that you might find in your garden… The first step to saving something you love is to be able to recognize it and to call it by name.”
(Bundaberg Now) An Australian coffee grower has shared footage of a swarm of Australian native bees battling it out for a hive takeover on his property. “It is sad to see but it’s just nature taking its course,” the grower said. He said the Australian native bees were a great asset to coffee growing and increase yield.
(NewScientist) The hybridization can threaten the long-term survival of the native bees, says Ignasi Bartomeus at the Doñana Biological Station in Seville, Spain. “Diversity is the best insurance against [environmental] perturbations because it creates variability from which to adapt to new situations,” he says. “If we homogenize the genetic diversity of some species, we are losing this insurance.”
(University of Arizona) The University of Arizona Insect Collection is collaborating with Pima Community College students and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum to catalog every native species of bee in Tucson and the surrounding Sonoran Desert.
(Colorado Public Radio) In Colorado, there are more than 950 bee species. One of them, the Prickly Pear Mining Bee, needs prickly pear cacti and sandstone to survive.
(The Conversation) To many people, power line corridors are eyesores that alter wild lands. But ecologically they are swaths of open, scrubby landscapes under transmission lines that support a rich and complex menagerie of life. New England researchers have surveyed bee communities in these corridors, finding numerous native species – including one of which is so rare it was thought to have been lost decades ago from the United States.