According to a study from The University of Texas at Austin and the University of California, Berkeley shows that the reason for bumblebees rarely found in agricultural landscapes could be paved roads and solid construction, reports Science Daily.
Bumblebees are important pollinators and they are not known for honey producers. This study suggests the increase of natural habitat within the landscape which will improve bees-nesting and preserve the food supplies globally. It also shows that bees need space and species-rich flowering patches for better pollination services. It can be achieved by increasing the number of flowering patches that are rich in species in the gardens, farms and restored habitats, reports Science Daily.
"We are potentially in a pollinator crisis," said Shalene Jha, lead author and assistant professor of biology at The University of Texas at Austin, according to Science Daily. "Honey bees are declining precipitously, and wild bees have also been exhibiting population declines across the globe. Native bees provide critical pollination services for fruit, nut, fiber and forage crops. Understanding how bees move around the landscape can help us both preserve biodiversity and improve crop yields."
The study further shows that 'floral diversity' helps bees move longer distances in forage to find flowers rich in species and not 'floral density.' Also if the neighboring land is less heterogeneous bees are like to fly further away from their nests. "In some ways, it's a bet-hedging strategy," said Jha. "If the landscape is composed of consistently dense flowering patches, bees take a risk and forage farther afield to find species-rich patches."
"In combination with earlier work showing that bumblebees have become rare in agricultural landscapes, our study suggests that farmers could promote these valuable pollinators by diversifying crop types and by planting cover crops and flowering hedgerows to enhance floral diversity," said senior author Claire Kremen, a professor at UC Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, according to Science Daily.
Jha further insisted on the importance of preserving the bumblebees as they are the most effective native pollinators. "They are large and can carry a lot of pollen. They also vibrate or 'buzz' flowers with their bodies and thus are excellent at extracting pollen and moving it from plant to plant," he said.
The study is published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences-PNAS.
