As the wild bee population declines, the importance of pollination becomes evident, threatening to disrupt crop production and the food economy. The first-ever study to map U.S. wild bees suggests they are disappearing in the country’s most important farmlands. From California’s Central Valley to the Midwest’s corn belt and the Mississippi River valley, the wild bee is disappearing, leading to increased pollination demand among crops, the majority of which either benefit from or require bees as pollinators. From University of Vermont: A new study of wild bees identifies 139 counties in key agricultural regions of California, the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, west Texas and the Mississippi River valley that face a worrisome mismatch between falling wild bee supply and rising crop pollination demand. Credit: PNAS If wild bee declines continue, it could hurt U.S. crop production and farmers’ costs, said Taylor Ricketts, a conservation ecologist at the University of Vermont, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting panel, Plan Bee: Pollinators, Food Production and U.S. Policy on Feb. 19. “This study provides the first national picture of wild bees and their impacts on pollination,” said Ricketts, Director of UVM’s Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, noting [...]
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