Native hum

As honeybees vanish, farmers turn to the wild pollinators in their back yards

In 1940, alfalfa-seed farmers in the desert of central Utah made an
interesting discovery: The primary pollinator of their crop was not the
honeybee, but the alkali bees that nested in the region’s salt flats.
For all its status as the workhorse of American agriculture, the
European honeybee didn’t really like foraging in alfalfa. But alkali
bees loved it, pollinating some 5,500 flowers daily. Farmers lucky
enough to live next to them were raising three times more alfalfa seed
per acre than those who didn’t.

From Utah to Washington state, farmers started transplanting thousands
of cubic feet of soil with alkali bee nests to aid in the production of
alfalfa seed — a hugely important crop because the alfalfa grown in
hayfields produces almost no seed on its own. The largest managed
alkali bee nesting bed is now five acres in size and is home to more
than 5 million bees.

“It gives me conniptions, it’s so big,” says Jim Cane, an entomologist
at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bee Biology and Systematics
Laboratory in Logan, Utah. “It’s just roaring with bees. The ground is
shimmering for several acres.” Cane says these farmers harvest at least
20 percent more seed than needed to break even.

The humble alkali bee had turned the attention of a whole sector of
commercial farmers away from the European honeybee. It was the first
time this had happened. It would not be the last.

While honeybees spent thousands of years honestly earning their
place in our hearts with their honey production, easily manipulated
colonies, generalist pollinating tendencies and heroic work ethic,
their wild cousins lived in obscurity. As the pioneers swarmed this
country, dubbing Utah “The Beehive State” and opening newspapers with
names like The Sacramento Bee, 3,000 to 4,000 species of wild bees
buzzed the landscape, largely unnoticed.

Native bees do not typically share the desire of the honeybee to live
in a small space with 10,000 members of the family. They do not produce
honey to keep their colony fed through the winter. These bees have
different habits, some of them so singular that they make scientists
laugh out loud with puzzlement. The female of one species likes to
burrow nine feet under a sand dune to lay a single egg. Another chews
away at sandstone walls to make its tiny nest. Yet another hangs on the
stalks of dead plants at night, alone and balled up, resembling a
berry. Some develop fabulous coloration — one orchid bee is metallic
gold with a blue abdomen and a red and gold thorax.

And they pollinate plants, often better than European honeybees. The
natives’ pollinating abilities are attracting more attention because
the honeybee on which most American agriculture depends has run into a
series of problems: It started mating with aggressive Africanized bees
that swept over the border from Mexico in 1990, rendering its children
often impossible to work with. It is vulnerable to parasitic mites and
fungi, weakened by insecticides and disease. In the past several
months, headline after headline has announced a dramatic drop in
honeybee populations due to a mysterious malady called Colony Collapse
Disorder.

Wild bees don’t mate with Africanized bees, nor do they suffer from the
same diseases and mites that afflict honeybees. There has never been a
better time to develop wild bee pollination talent for use in American
agriculture. The bee lab in Logan — one of five federal research labs
devoted to bee research, and the only one that doesn’t deal in
honeybees — is doing just that.

“There’s no real danger of the honeybee going extinct,” said Jamie
Strange, an entomologist who is preparing to spend the afternoon
trapping bumblebees near his lab in Logan to study for use in
greenhouses and tomato production. “But it’s like investing. Diversify
your portfolio. Diversify!”



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