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.
Tag Archives: Native Bees
It’s not all about honey for Wales’ 180 bee varieties
Unpopular opinion: saving honey bees does very little to save the bees
(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.”
Thousands of native bees battle it out at coffee farm
(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.
Farmed bees are mating with native bees – and that could endanger them
(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.”
The desert is abuzz with bees
Colorado has 950 bee species and only a few of them look like the ones that come to mind for most people
New England power line corridors harbor rare bees and other wild things
(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.