U.S. wild bee numbers fall as demand for fuel from corn grows

Helping agriculture preserve wild pollinatorsThe authors agreed that the study results may help farmers and agricultural stakeholders develop management efforts to preserve wild bee populations and their pollination services in farmland.

A major cause in the decline of wild bee populations is the expansion of farmland that encroaches on the bees’ natural habitat.

The red-flagged counties included agricultural regions of the upper Midwest and Great Plains, the Central Valley in California, west Texas, the Pacific Northwest, and the southern Mississippi River valley.

Diseases and pesticides are also factor that played a significant role in the declines we witness among the almost 4,000 USA species of wild bees.

Over those five years, relative abundance of wild bees declined in 23 percent of the land area in the contiguous states, the study found.

In 2014, President Obama issued a memorandum calling for an assessment of the state of honey and wild bees across the U.S., in the face of an increasing number of threats such as colony collapse disorder. Scientists are now hoping that their effort will help regulators in identifying the 7 million acres which the White House has sought to protect as habitat for pollinators across the following 5 years. Also, nuts like California almonds are reliant on wild bees as key pollinators, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“Indeed it is crops where demand has most increased that we estimate greatest decline in wild pollinator supply”, Williams said. Ricketts added that decline in wild bee populations might increase expenditure for farmers and may end up destabilizing crop production. While some crops like corn and wheat do not need the bees to thrive, a large number of them depend on pollinators to grow. If the bee decline continues nearly all of the counties will eventually become inadequately pollinated. The article states that the wild bees that need dedicated land for nesting and foraging contributed to an estimated 11 percent of the U.S.A.’s agricultural gross domestic product in 2009, about $3 billion.

And, in turn, where the bees are most needed, the demands have gone up by 200%.

Williams noted that the paper has the potential to bring wider attention to the correlation between the status of wild bee communities and crop pollination demands nationally.

According to co-author of the study, Taylor Ricketts from the Gund Institute, pollinators are clearly in trouble.

The map can be considered to be a warning to growers that they are too dependent on commercial honey bees and should “diversify their portfolio”, Ricketts commented.

Of particular concern, the study shows that some of the crops most dependent on pollinators-including pumpkins, watermelons, pears, peaches, plums, apples and blueberries-have the strongest pollination mismatch, with a simultaneous drop in wild bee supply and increase in pollination demand.

The model’s confidence is greatest in agricultural areas with declining bees, matching both the consensus of the experts’ opinion and available field data. This has been revealed by a research team that worked to produce the first ever national map sketching bee populations.