News — Bumble Bees

Each month our Bee Informed Blog highlights current news, science, and research related to solitary bee conservation, food insecurity, and sustainability. 1. "These Are My Most Trusted Native Plants For Restoration And Here’s Why" (Anna Murray, Xerces Society) I am a pollinator habitat specialist, which means that I plant a lot of plants. In my 15 years of growing native plants in nurseries and restoring habitats in national parks, college campuses, home gardens and farms, I estimate that I have personally grown or planted over 90,000 native plants and facilitated the planting of over 260,000. Here are a few native plants that...

Each month our Bee Informed Blog highlights current news, science, and research related to solitary bee conservation, food insecurity, and sustainability. 1. Native Bees Climb Social Ladder (County News) A native bee which nests in tree-fern fronds is helping scientists understand how life developed to be social and altruistic — and how bees evolved to purposefully hatch sterile young, a fact which defies Darwin’s natural selection theory. The Australian bee Amphylaeus morosus only recently made the jump from being a solitary species to a social one — which made them a perfect, and rare, animal to put under the metaphorical microscope. The...

Each month our Bee Informed Blog highlights current news, science, and research related to solitary bee conservation, food insecurity, and sustainability. 1. Adjusting interactions help some of California's wild bee populations survive PHYS.ORG - Across California's Central Valley, under stress from large-scale agriculture and climate change, native bee species that are flexible in their pollination behavior when around other wild bee populations appear best suited for survival in shrinking habitats. Continue reading... 2. Social queens with bright, distinctive patterns, Capitol Hill’s bumble bees also have perfect hair As a solitary bee company, we naturally focus the majority of our attention on the cavity-nesting...

Messing with the microbes within their hive-stored pollen hurts bumblebees Of the 20,000+ bee species on Earth, only about a dozen are used by farmers in commercial agriculture, and these crucial populations of managed bees have been declining at an alarming rate. Several factors, including increased use of pesticides, habitat fragmentation, emerging diseases, and reduced genetic diversity may be responsible for such bee losses. In response to this pollinator crisis, recent conservation efforts have led to stricter regulations on insecticide use. However, other agrochemicals such as herbicides and fungicides that do not directly target insects (such as bees) continue to...