Bees need our help!

Apparently, there are an estimated 300+ native bee species in Alberta and 800+ species in Canada. I had no idea!

"Bees are the world's most important plant pollinators. Several species of bees have been imported to Alberta to pollinate crops and to produce honey. These and the native wild bees (like the bumblebee) play an extremely important role in nature. Without them, many fruits and seeds would not be produced."

esrd.alberta.ca/fish-wildlife/wild-species/invertebrates/...

"The systemic nature of the problem makes it complex, but not impenetrable. Scientists know that bees are dying from a variety of factors—pesticides, drought, habitat destruction, nutrition deficit, air pollution, global warming and more. Many of these causes are interrelated. The bottom line is that we know humans are largely responsible for the two most prominent causes: pesticides and habitat loss." From Greenpeace.

www.greenpeace.org/usa/sustainable-agriculture/save-the-b...

"How many different species of wild bees would you guess we have here in Alberta? How many can you name? Most people drastically underestimate the diversity of bees that call this province home and think of them only as either bumblebees or honeybees. The reality is much richer, with a surprising estimate of over 300 different kinds of bees in Alberta. All of them provide an essential ecosystem service by pollinating crops, gardens, and wildflowers. For example, pollination increases the yield of canola, an important crop grown in Alberta, by 10-30% (Morandin and Wilson, 2005).

Because of their important role as crop pollinators, bees are of interest to the ABMI’s (Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute) Ecosystem Services Assessment Project. This project is mapping ecosystem services, which are the benefits provided by natural systems that contribute to our health and well-being. In order to map pollination services, the project requires information on the abundance and diversity of bees in Alberta, and where they’re living—information that is lacking for many areas of the province.

To address this information gap, the project has partnered with Dr. Jessamyn Manson at the University of Alberta to conduct two years of wild bee surveys across Alberta’s agricultural zone. These surveys are occurring in commercial canola fields all the way from the US border to sites near Grande Prairie." From an article on the ABMI's blog, written on 4 February 2015. The bee team has conducted a second field season in 2015 and continuing to process the 2014 samples.

blog.abmi.ca/2015/02/04/the-latest-buzz-on-albertas-wild-...

www.amazon.com/The-Beekeepers-Lament-Billion-America/dp/0...

This photo of an Echinacea flower was taken at the Reader Rock Garden on 26 August 2015.