[Pollinator] Wonderful Wild Bees. How They Can Help the Harried Honey Bee

[Matthew Shepherd (Xerces Society)]

The February issue of the USDA-ARS's Agricultural Research magazine includes an article about the work of the Logan bee lab. The opening paragraphs are pasted in below as a taster

Full article at http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/feb08/bee0208.htm
Wonderful Wild Bees
How They Can Help the Harried Honey Bee
Working quietly behind the scenes, America’s wild bees help with pollination chores. Luscious berries, crunchy almonds, and many more foods that we enjoy each benefit when these mostly unheralded insects visit blossoms and inadvertently—but, for us and the plant, fortuitously—place pollen where it’s needed most.
In fact, the work of America’s wild bees might be especially needed in view of the blows being dealt to the nation’s No. 1 pollinator, the “domesticated” European honey bee, Apis mellifera.
The recent and mostly mysterious colony collapse disorder has pummeled honey bee hives, adding another burden to the bees’ already long list of woes: beetles, mites, and diseases like foulbrood and chalkbrood.
Wild and native bees are also known as “non-honey bees” because they don’t produce the sugary golden syrup. Some carry the moniker “solitary bees” because they live the single life, perhaps making their nests near other bees—in a somewhat gregarious fashion—but at the same time not surrendering their independence to the communal, ultra-socialized lifestyle of a hive, for example.
Whatever their name, these hardworking bees have always played a strong supporting role to hived honey bees.
Uncovering secrets about the lives of the nation’s wild bees commands the full attention of bee experts at a unique research facility in Logan, Utah. It’s the ARS Bee Biology and Systematics Laboratory, North America’s only scientific institution devoted exclusively to providing practical, science-based knowledge on how to domesticate, that is, manage, non-honey bees such as the alfalfa leafcutting bee, Megachile rotundata—a proficient pollinator of that forage crop; the blue orchard or orchard mason bee, Osmia lignaria—a winged worker of apple, cherry, and almond orchards; bumble bees; and others.
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The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
The Xerces Society is an international nonprofit organization that 
protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their 
habitat. To join the Society, make a contribution, or read about our 
work, please visit www.xerces.org.

Matthew Shepherd
Senior Conservation Associate
4828 SE Hawthorne Boulevard, Portland, OR 97215, USA
Tel: 503-232 6639 Cell: 503-807 1577 Fax: 503-233 6794
Email: mdshepherd at xerces.org 
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