In one way or another, nearly all the buzz on bees these days is about us humans being in deep trouble. Bee populations, both in managed honeybee colonies and in the wild, are dying in alarming numbers and the food system, which depends on those bees for pollination, is in big trouble… These wild bee species are able to withstand agricultural expansions and the populations can even grow, with “simple conservation methods.” This finding is especially important as bee experts have pointed to an increasingly monoculture-saturated landscape as one of the challenges for bees, because it often encroaches on their natural habitat…(Many experts and studies point to neonicotinoid pesticides, frequently used in modern agriculture, as the culprit behind bee deaths. This study does not shed much light on that question, says author Rachael Winfree of Rutgers University, as the researchers didn’t collect or analyze data on that point. However, she adds, “We found that many bee species DID decline with increasing agricultural intensification- just the more common bee species that pollinate many crops did not decline.)
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