Sentences with phrase «wild bees at»

Not exact matches

Of the hundred principal crops that make up most of the world's food supply, only 15 percent are pollinated by domestic bees (mostly honey bees, bumble bees and alfalfa leafcutter bees), while at least 80 percent are pollinated by wild bees and other wildlife (as there are an estimated 25 000 bee species, the total number of pollinators probably exceeds 40 000 species).

He was also a visiting research fellow at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, visiting in 1998 to study pollinator ecology, which included different species of bees and hoverflies, and again in 2003 to study wild bee ecology.

Researchers at the University of York mapped population data for 62 wild bee species sprinkled across the United Kingdom along with neonicotinoid treatment in local oilseed rape (Brassica napus) fields over 18 years.

A promising study published last autumn by ecologists Sarah Greenleaf of the University of California at Davis and Claire Kremen of the University of California at Berkeley found that the presence of wild bees increases the efficiency of sunflower pollination fivefold.

Jim Cane, an entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bee Biology and Systematics Lab in Utah, is working on ways that wild bees could replace honeybees on some crops, rather than merely supplementing them.

Leaf - cutter bees and alkali bees pollinate alfalfa, the blue orchard bee pollinates fruit trees (especially almonds), wild bee species Osmia aglaia and O. bruneri pollinate raspberries and blackberries, and O. ribifloris is effective at tending to blueberries.

Even though the study looked at wild bees in Great Britain, the same transmission dynamics could easily show up in North America, says coauthor Mark J.F. Brown of Royal Holloway, University of London.

Both of these pathogens showed up in wild bees collected randomly at 26 sites around Great Britain.

Claire Kremen, a conservation biologist at the University of California, Berkeley (and Harmon - Threatt's mentor), has shown that the diversity of pollinators drops with increasing distance from wild habitat, as does the number of visits by wild bees to flowering crops.

To investigate further, Michael Otterstatter and his colleagues at the University of Toronto, Canada, modelled the spread of the parasite from commercial bumble bees to their wild relatives.

For Maine's blueberry growers, for instance, wild bees do a fine job at pollinating.

Jeremy Kerr, a biologist at the University of Ottawa in Canada, thinks it should only be used inside greenhouses, away from wild bees.

«We also wanted to look at both managed honey bee colonies and «wild» ones, to see if that made a difference — and it did,» says David Tarpy, a professor of entomology at NC State and corresponding author on the paper.

Orchid bees were best at dealing with 35 % solutions, which is exactly the sugar concentration of nectar that the animals collect in the wild, whereas lapping species, such as honeybees, prefer more syrupy nectar, with a sugar concentration of around 55 %, Borrell reports online this week in Biology Letters.

«These associations support the hypothesis that Nosema escaped into wild populations from heavily infected commercial colonies, at least during the earlier years of bumble bee domestication in the U.S.,» she said.

Dr Fürst, from the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway, said: «Wild and managed bees are in decline at national and global scales.

The research identified five viruses — black queen cell virus, deformed wing virus, acute bee paralysis virus, slow bee paralysis virus and sacbrood virus (all named for their effects in honeybees) from wild bumblebees and managed honeybees at 26 sites across Great Britain.

Rachael Winfree, an associate professor of entomology at Rutgers University in New Jersey, studied 23 small New Jersey and Pennsylvania watermelon farms and found that wild, native bees were depositing 62 percent of the pollen on the crops.

«An important further point to address is the use of neonicotinoid pesticides in ornamental plants grown in greenhouses, which at the moment does not seem to be addressed — urban gardens have become an ever more important habitat for wild bees.»

Steve Frank, associate professor of entomology at NC State University, tested 15 species of the most common wild bee species that exist in Southern cities to identify the highest temperatures each could withstand.

The evidence against neonicotinoids now exists in key bee brain cells involved in learning and memory, in whole bees, entire colonies and now at the level of whole populations of wild bees.

Thus, any outside use at all leads to a high risk to both honeybees and wild bees.

Populations of wild bees and other pollinating species, including butterflies and moths, birds and bats, are being pushed to extinction at startling rates.