[Pollinator] New study on feral honey bees vs. native bees

[Keng-Lou James Hung]

Hello bee and pollinator friends,

I'm excited to share with you our new study hot off the press! This is "yet
another" study on exploitative competition that honey bees may exert upon
native bees, but with a couple of fresh takes in that we (1) estimated the
relative biomass in addition to the relative abundances of feral honey bees
and the native bee community, and (2) quantified per-visit pollen grain
removal by honey bees to scale up their role in pollen depletion for three
key native plant species. Surprise surprise - in an ecosystem overrun by
very high honey bee abundances, they also remove the vast majority of the
pollen and outmass native bees nearly 50:1.

Our study can be found here (thanks to UC San Diego for making open access
possible!):
https://resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/icad.12858

We still don't have any magical answers for this alarming situation, but we
hope that by adding another proverbial stroke to the picture that is
emerging with the recent two decades of research on honey bee vs. native
bee competition, we would encourage more dialogue among policymakers,
large-scale beekeepers, habitat managers, and conservation biologists to
find collaborative solutions together.

Cheers!
James
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