For the Bees!
spring+pollination
All of the new blooms in our yard—the plum trees, red-flowering currants, forsythia, and the daffodils—have me thinking about pollination. For several years, we hosted an entomology graduate student on our farm. He was doing a population and diversity study on pollinators and he was also trying to understand what unique pollinator habitat is created on agroecosystems in northwestern Washington. Eli Bloom is now Dr. Eli Bloom and I recently revisited the list of bees species he found in our herb beds:
2015
Bombus flavifrons
Apis mellifera
Bombus californicus
Lasioglossum nrvillosulum
Bombus mixtus
Agapostemon texanus
Bombus vosnesenskii
Lasioglossum zonulum
2016
Bombus flavifrons
Bombus californicus
Apis mellifera
Lasioglossum nrvillosulum
Agapostemon texanus
Bombus sitkensis
Bombus vosnesenskii
Lasioglossum zonulum
Lasioglossum laevissimum
Lasioglossum cfmellipes
Anthidium manicatum
Although Eli commented that we had an “impressive” amount of pollinators, this is a small subset of the 63 bee genera (600 to 900 species) found in the Northwestern US. Dr. Bloom has since written several papers about the project. Here is one in the journal Functional Ecology that is available open source. Part of the project also included quite a bit of citizen science and data collected in Seattle and Olympia. You can read about that here.
I wrote a poem about this interesting experience with on-farm research. It was published in The Hopper in 2018.
According to The Bee Conservancy, 1 in 4 bee species are at risk for extinction. In general, Eli has mentioned that the species of bee in WA are not well know. We do know that over 70% of crops needs pollinators (especially bees), so it seems that creating habitat on and around farms for pollinators is extremely necessary and mutually beneficial.
I found this helpful talk for home gardeners and landscapers from University of MN Bee Lab and I wanted to share:
Spring is on its way! Enjoy this change of season and look for a new writing prompt next week.
