Posts Tagged: pollinators
To bee or not to bee depends on the crop
About 35 percent of the food we eat depends on the assistance of bees to pollinate plants and trees so they will produce fruit, nuts or vegetables. It takes 1.6 million colonies of honey bees to pollinate California's 800,000 acres of almond trees.
Our food choices would be dramatically reduced if bees weren't around to pollinate. To illustrate what the produce section of a grocery store would look like in a world without bees, Whole Foods Market removed the products that depend on pollination from one of its stores and took a photo. See the difference: http://ucanr.tumblr.com/post/84164840510/kqedscience-whole-foods-shows-customers-the. Without bees, more than half the fruits and vegetables were eliminated.
Honey bees and other pollinators are being threatened by the drought, disease, mites, loss of habitat and food sources, according to Eric Mussen, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Entomology at UC Davis and bee expert.
Beth Grafton-Cardwell, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Entomology at UC Riverside and director of Lindcove Research and Extension Center, talks about the role of pollinators in California agriculture in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8suOt5PnzWc&feature=youtu.be.
To see photos of different kinds of pollinators and to learn more about how to help them thrive, visit our pollinator page. On May 8, help count the pollinators in your community and add them to the map at http://beascientist.ucanr.edu.
Pollinators in trouble
“I'll be holding a precious resource in my hands, one that is essential to life on earth,” says Allen-Diaz. “I'll be placing my hands in Norm's hands to raise awareness about the value of honeybees.”
While raising money for education is certainly a worthy goal, as Allen-Diaz says, the event also draws attention to the plight of our most important agricultural pollinator. In 2006, a number of beekeepers in the Western U.S. noticed their hives had lost 30 to 70 percent of their worker bees. The phenomenon, now known as colony collapse disorder (CCD), is still not fully understood, though a number of factors are believed to be involved. They include habitat loss or degradation and fragmentation, poor nutrition, certain bee management and agricultural practices, natural and chemical toxins, diseases, and parasites. Any one of these factors can affect the insects' ability to combat any of the others. Isolating a single cause, if there is one, has proved elusive.
Many of the fruits and vegetables on the tables of the world are pollinated by insects, particularly bees, and if they were to disappear, our sources of plant food would be restricted to grains and not too much else. It's no wonder CCD is such a concern (for example, see the United Nations Environmental Program 2010 report on Global Bee Colony Disorder and USDA, Honey Bees and Colony Collapse Disorder.
As human population grows and becomes more urban, and as habitats get more fragmented, it is no longer adequate to focus conservation efforts merely in non-urban, non-working landscapes.
“We need to figure out how to accommodate as many native species as possible in these kinds of places,” says Patrick Huber of the City of Davis Open Space and Habitat Commission, which has adopted pollinator habitat enhancement as a working goal. The Commission is working to compile a GIS dataset of known big patches of habitat in Davis, in order map pollinator resources around town.
Huber is a geographer in the Landscape Analysis and Systems Research lab at UC Davis, where he focuses on spatial scale in conservation planning. He is working on a tool to help match gardeners with plants that will grow well in their regions, that are locally available, and that provide a network of resources for pollinators throughout the urban landscape and on into the agricultural landscape. For the moment this project is being piloted in Davis, but the hope is to expand it to other communities, tying in resources such as CalFlora.
- Planning for succession blooming (in the Central Valley, that means late winter through fall)
- Putting plants in clumps at least 4 feet long if possible (honeybees, especially, like to specialize)
- Putting in plants that provide both nectar and pollen (nectar is fuel for adult bees, pollen is protein for the young)
- Using native plants where possible; they're drought tolerant and have what our native bees need
- Avoiding most-toxic pesticides and herbicides
- Providing a clean source of water (a slow-dripping tap on a sloped surface is ideal; bees like to drink from very shallow sources)
- Providing cavity nest holes in wood for carpenter and other bees
- Leaving some areas of gardens unmulched for ground-nesting bees
There are ways the agricultural landscape can be made more hospitable, too. Neal Williams, professor of entomology at UC Davis, has been working on a project to install 600- to 800-meter plots of flowering plants alongside large fields as resources for pollinators. This has moved out of the trial phase into test plots in coastal and foothill areas as well as in the Central Valley.
Meanwhile, we can all help count our pollinators on May 8, the Day of Science and Service to celebrate 100 years of Cooperative Extension in California. We'll be conducting our own pollinator count here outside the ANR building in Davis: join us, or let us know about yours!
Many thanks to Kathy Keatley Garvey for use of her photos.
Honey bees: Should they be banned from native plant restoration areas?
The dwindling resources of pollen and nectar-producing plants in California greatly concern bee scientists and beekeepers, and rightfully so.
But the dwindling resources also greatly concern native pollinator specialists and native plant enthusiasts. Some worry that honey bees, which are non-natives, may be "reducing" or "eliminating" native pollinators through competition for food.
Are they?
Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology explains that a number of agencies and organizations are cooperating in an effort to "restore" regions of the California Central Valley to their "original state."
“The major emphases are (1) replacing non-native vegetation with native plants and (2) encouraging native animals to return to their former ranges,” Mussen says. "The result has been eviction of beekeepers from apiary locations that have been used for decades as seasonal spots for rebuilding populations following the stresses of commercial pollination or for producing honey."
Indeed, in some situations, honey bees can survive, and native pollinators can’t.
“With honey bees, if we provide them with an adequate hive and food sources, they are likely to survive,” Mussen says. “However, native pollinators can be very particular about the environment in which they can exist. If their nesting habitat is disturbed, modified or destroyed, they cannot live in the area, despite an abundance of food plants. In many California locations, it is habitat alteration or destruction, not lack of food, which eliminated the native pollinators.”
So, should honey bees be banned from restoration areas?
"No," Mussen says. "Honey bees should be solicited for restoration areas, not banned."
Mussen shares a list of 130 native California plants that are likely to be visited - "and probably pollinated" - by honey bees. They include button bush or button willow, fiddleneck, and California golden poppy. The list is excerpted from Nectar and Pollen Plants of California by G. H. Vansell UC Berkeley, plus personal observations by native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, UC Davis emeritus professor of entomology. The list is updated, reflecting information on the CalFlora website and the Jepson Manual of Higher Plants of California.
Thorp, who monitors the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, planted in the fall of 2009 on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis, has found more than 80 different species of bees - and counting - in the half-acre bee garden. It's located next to the apiary at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility.
So honey bees and native bees share the resources.
A honey bee foraging on button willow, also known as button bush, Cephalanthus occidentalis. Honey bees on non-natives, and the button bush is a native California plant. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Honey bee visiting California golden poppy, Eschscholzia spp. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Honey bee foraging on fiddleneck, Amsinckia spp. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Watching out for native worker bees
With warm weather and mostly dry skies, some California farmers are prepping their fields for spring planting. On many fields used to grow squash and pumpkins, native squash bees (Peponapis pruinosa), valuable pollinators for squash growers, are nesting in the soil, waiting for spring emergence. With over ten thousand acres of squash and pumpkins grown in California in 2011, the success of pollination covers a lot of ground.
For native bee researcher Katharina Ullmann, understanding how these bees will be impacted by the upcoming tillage and other farming practices are big questions that can help farmers make decisions that protect native bee populations in their fields and maximize the benefit farmers see from pollinators. Ullmann was recently awarded a grant from Western SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) and the National Science Foundation to fund her doctoral research on how crop rotations and tillage practices affect native squash bee populations.
Native squash bees nest 5 to 20 inches deep in the soil, and plowing or disking often disturbs soil as much as 20 inches deep, potentially damaging bee nests. Conservation tillage and no-till practices are increasingly seen as ways to lower fuel use and on-farm emissions from nitrogen and carbon dioxide, as well as decrease water runoff. Protecting native bee populations could potentially be an additional co-benefit to these methods.
I think about native bees as an insurance policy and potentially a yield increaser,” says Ullmann. “Honey bees are important; they’re always going to be important. But it can be beneficial for growers to know if they have crop-pollinating native bees flying around if, for example, honey bee prices spike or if it’s hard for a grower to get the number of honey bee colonies he or she needs.” Too, with new studies highlighting the productivity of native bees (in some cases doubling fruit set compared to honey bees), there is growing incentive to protect nesting grounds.
The results of Ullmann’s tillage study, in coordination with a parallel study on the effect of crop rotation on bee populations, will be turned into a user-friendly web tool for farmers to assess which combination of in-field practices will likely be best for fostering bee populations. “In creating these models of tillage and crop rotation practices, we’re hoping to help farmers find the synergy between different farming practices that yield the greatest benefits,” says Ullmann.
“Not all farmers will change tillage or crop rotation practices just because of bees, but maybe this is another piece of information that farmers can use to make informed management decisions. “Ultimately,” says Ullmann, “my goal is to provide farmers with that opportunity.”
Looking for squash bees on your farm or in your garden? They look similar to honey bees but with fuzzier legs that lift dry pollen from squash blossoms, and male bees have a yellow spot on their face that resembles a nose. But perhaps the easiest way to identify them — gently squeeze a closed squash blossom and wait to hear a buzz. The bee inside is likely a native squash bee, resting up in preparation for more work.
Pollinators are in the news
The insects and animals that bustle from blossom to blossom collecting food while inadvertently pollinating plants are responsible for helping produce some of the healthiest food on the planet. Any threat to pollinators, therefore, is a threat to human health, according to a study published this week in the online journal PLoS ONE.
The study was carried out by an international team that included scientists from UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco. It stemmed from a working group at UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, said a UCSB news release.
The research team showed that, globally, "animal-pollinated crops contain the majority of the available dietary lipid, vitamin A, C, and E, and a large portion of the minerals calcium, fluoride, and iron worldwide. The yield increase attributable to animal-dependent pollination of these crops is significant and could have a potentially drastic effect on human nutrition if jeopardized," the release said.
This isn't the only news about the animals that pollinate crops important to the human food supply. In the UC Green Blog yesterday, UC Berkeley writer Ann Guy reported that a UC Berkeley study credited wild bee species with pollinating California crops to the tune of $937 million to $2.4 billion per year. Many of those pollinators are wild bees that live on rangelands – chiefly ranches that graze cattle.
"As it turns out, the farmer and the cowman should be friends," wrote Guy, quoting lyrics from the classic "Oklahoma!" song.
Non-native species, many that serve as hard-working pollinators, were also lauded in a news release distributed this week by writer Kathy Keatley Garvey of the UC Davis Department of Entomology. The release was based on a recent article, published in the journal Nature, titled “Don’t Judge Species on Their Origins." The garden-variety honeybee is a non-native species in the United States.
“Nativeness is not a sign of evolutionary fitness or of a species having positive effects,” the journal article says.
For stunning photos of a variety of pollinators, see Garvey's Bug Squad post on National Pollinator Week.
Female wool carder bee (Anthidium manicatum) heads for lupine at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, UC Davis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)