[Pollinator] Introducing pollinators to new areas?

[Jim Cane]

Lucy- I agree with Laurence Packer's perspective.  Every bee species has
its mites, viruses, bacterial and fungal pathogens, microsporidians,
parasitic wasps, predators and more.  Nesting populations of
cavity-nesting species at least can be cleaned of many kinds of
overwintering parasitic and predatory insects, which our lab visualizes
using xray imagery.  But we can't eliminate spores or mites.
Introduction and release of bees from other continents, at least, bears
the same risks that we now see besetting the honey bee industry with its
disease-bearing Asian mites.  As John Ascher notes, we now have a
Japanese sapygid wasp, a parasite of Osmia bees.  It coincidently flies
in the same part of the same state where Japanese Osmia cornifrons were
introduced, passed through required USDA quarantive procedures, and were
released a few decades ago.  Now who knows which North American Osmia
they will attack?  From another perspective, think of the mortality
wrought on Native Amercans by diseases inadvertently transported to the
New World by European colonists, who themselves had some evolved
resistance from millenia of exposure.

In my opinion, the risks and consequences of bee introduction becomes
much less clear when moving a species around within its native range or
just past the periphery of its range.  I would like to see data, or
consider comparable analogies even.  Perhaps the greater the distance or
the more impermiable and lasting the intervening barrier, the greater
the chance that bee faunas on either side will respond adversely to
introduced problems because they are more likely to have never
confronted the current disease or parasite before.  For example, risks
may be greater for moving a California endemic to Georgia (USA) than
moving a native bee species to a neighboring state or within its own
range.  For certain, if the benefits realized do not outweigh the risks,
then I would not do it, especially if convenience is a driving factor.

jim cane