Bee Diversity: Key to Sustainable Agriculture

It is a widely held belief that biodiversity benefits an entire community, and researchers at Rutgers University have conducted a study that confirms this idea.

The study, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution shows that bee diversity is essential for the pollination of crops and for feeding people.

The team observed bee communities on several farms in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and California, and found that multiple bee species are necessary for pollination during a single flowering period. To ensure pollination across multiple seasons, even more species were required.

«This research shows that abundance (of a species) matters, but bee diversity matters even more«, said Michelle Elekonich, Deputy Division Director of the Division of Biological Sciences at the National Science Foundation. «It is not the same bees that are abundant at any given time, and diversity is necessary to maintain a balance throughout a growing season – and from year to year.«

«We found that two to three times as many bee species are needed to achieve the target pollination performance over the entire growing season, compared to a single point in time«, explains Natalie Lemanski, lead author of the study. «Likewise, twice as many species were needed to ensure pollination over a six-year period, compared to a single year.«

The researchers observed bees and pollen quantities over several years to collect data for the study. They gathered data from six blueberry farms in southern New Jersey, 25 watermelon farms in central New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, and 36 watermelon farms in the northern Central Valley in California.

The experts note that these findings suggest that biodiversity is crucial to crop success, and the more bee diversity we support, the better our crops will thrive.