permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

[This was also in the BBC News at 6 & 11:30 last night]

Wild bee populations dwindle in main U.S. crop regions: study | Reuters
http://in.reuters.com/article/us-science-bees-idINKBN0U42J220151222
reen Business | Tue Dec 22, 2015 6:42am IST
Related: Science, <http://in.reuters.com/news/science> Environment,
<http://in.reuters.com/subjects/environment> Environment
<http://in.reuters.com/news/environment>

Wild bee populations dwindle in main U.S. crop regions: study
WASHINGTON | By Will Dunham

Bees land on a sunflower to gather pollen in Encinitas, California in this
file photo from June 23, 2009.
Reuters/Mike Blake/Files

Wild bees, crucial pollinators for many crops, are on the decline in some
of the main agricultural regions of the United States, according to
scientists who produced the first national map of bee populations and
identified numerous trouble spots.

The researchers on Monday cited 139 counties as especially worrisome, with
wild bee numbers decreasing while farmland for crops dependent on such
pollinators is increasing.

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

The counties grew crops such as almonds, pumpkins, squashes, blueberries,
watermelons, peaches and apples that are highly dependent on pollinators,
or had large amounts of less-pollinator-dependent crops including soybeans,
canola and cotton.

Taylor Ricketts, director of the University of Vermont's Gund Institute for
Ecological Economics, said the 139 counties represent 39 percent of the
pollinator-dependent crop area of the United States and most likely will
face inadequate pollination in the future.

"Wild bee declines may increase costs for farmers and, over time, could
even destabilize crop production," Ricketts said.

Some crops such as corn and wheat do not need pollinators.

The study estimated that wild bee numbers diminished in 23 percent of the
continental United States between 2008 and 2013 in a trend driven by
conversion of their natural habitat into farmland including corn for
biofuel production.

Pesticides and diseases were cited as other factors behind the declines
among the roughly 4,000 U.S. species of wild bees.

"Wild bees help pollinate many of our most nutritious crops, support
natural ecosystems and contribute over $3 billion to the U.S. economy each
year," Ricketts said.

Their decline may prompt greater dependence on commercial honeybee colonies
for pollinating crops, but honeybee numbers also are falling, added Gund
Institute researcher Insu Koh, the lead author of the study published in
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Our results highlight the need for strategies to maintain pollinator
populations in farmland, and the importance of conservation programs that
provide flowering habitat that can support wild bees and other
pollinators," said Michigan State University entomologist Rufus Isaacs, who
heads the U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded Integrated Crop Pollination
Project.

The study followed a 2014 memorandum by President Barack Obama creating a
task force to study pollinator losses. The task force in May called for
preserving wide swathes of pollinator habitats.