Bumblebees do best with floral diversity

 

Areas with large amounts of roads and construction have lower numbers of ground- nesting bumble bees. These insects are very important native pollinators, which is a study from the University of Texas and the University of California. The study suggests that management strategies that reduce the local use of pavement and increase natural habitat within the landscape could improve nesting opportunities for wild bees and help protect food supplies around the world.  It was also discovered that with increasing the number of species-rich flowering patches in suburban and urban gardens, farms and restored habitats could provide pathways for bees to forage and improve pollination services over larger areas. In addition to finding that pavement negatively affects the bees, the scientists discovered that bees will move longer distances to find patches of flowers that are rich in species; it's not floral density that determines how far a bumblebee will fly, but floral diversity. Bees will also forage further away from their home nest if the surrounding landscape is less heterogeneous. "In some ways, it's a bet-hedging strategy," said Jha, a researcher at UC Berkeley. "If the landscape is composed of consistently dense flowering patches, bees take a risk and forage farther afield to find species-rich patches." Bumblebees nest in the ground, and each colony contains a queen and a force of workers. As with honeybees, all of the bumblebee workers are sisters who spend some of their time flying around searching for flowers from which to collect pollen and nectar to feed the larvae back in the hive. Unlike honeybees, which are not native, bumblebees do not make harvestable honey. They do, however, provide important pollination services to plants. I didn't know that bees had such an impact on our food supply. I think we should try a little harder to sustain the flower diversity and habitats for the bumblebees. My solution to the problem would be to give bumblebees their own habitats where humans can't mess up the environment for them. The problem with this solution is that our world is constantly expanding and it would be very hard to create space just for bumblebees.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121226080902.htm