[Pollinator] [GRAYMAIL] Fwd: Bee hotels may not be that good

[Peter Bernhardt]

Good.  I think this question hits the nail on the head and should be open
to two lines of discussion.

1) Since most North American bees are ground nesters can someone provided
information or literature on constructing sites that are friendly to
nesting females?  Should we be conserving old, stone walls, boulder piles,
sand pits and how do we make our own?

2) Here is the most difficult question.  Has anyone access to dependable
research how many honeybee hives can be placed in a particular site without
stressing the native pollinators?  Yes this is a very touchy subject and I
don't want to open old wounds.  Due to the eusocial system and huge
populations of workers in hives older literature (from Australia) tends to
show how adept they are at draining native nectar resources and collecting
pollen.  We've no evidence that commercial honeybee hives cause local
extinctions of other species, do we?  We seem to have some evidence (from
Panama) that, as hive numbers go up, the population densities of native
nectar foragers can go down.

Peter

On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 8:07 AM, Hank <acorn at treenuts.ca> wrote:

> Our local beekeepers here in Ottawa Canada want to help wild pollinators,
> too. Since 'bee hotels’ are not good, what can these folks do, if anything,
> to make the pollinator world better while still getting their honey and
> beeswax? Hank
>
> On Mar 29, 2015, at 2:22 PM, Peter Bernhardt <bernhap2 at slu.edu> wrote:
>
> A colleague sent the attached this morning.  You may find this of
> interest. In the past, I have found the research of Dr Packer very
> dependable.
>
> Peter Bernhardt
>
> --
> Gerardo R Camilo, Ph.D.
> Assoc. Professor of Biology
> Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
>    & International Studies
> Conservation Fellow, St. Louis Zoo
>
> <journal.pone.0122126.pdf>_______________________________________________
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