They’ve always been subjected to a long list of existential threats: habitat loss through agriculture, construction and urban development; pesticides, insecticides and other harmful chemicals; and competition from domesticated honeybees.
For example, spreading the seeds of plants frequented by bees could both stabilize the ground after a prescribed burn and help reestablish bee communities.The Seattle Times. "It’s hard for a bee to outfly a fire." Initial observations suggest bees are healthiest at three-year post-burn sites, the window of time in which apparently the understory is just abundant enough to provide habitat and food, but the overstory isn’t blocking the sun.
Too few fires and undergrowth builds up, becoming a dangerous cache of fuel for the next fire. An overgrown tree canopy can block sunlight from the forest floor and soil can miss out on vital nutrients from burned detritus. Disruption of that timing can alter an ecosystem’s countless seasonal cycles, resulting in a so-called phenological mismatch.
Still, Brosi found that plants in plots of accelerated snowmelt produced fewer seeds than those in the control plots. Native bees continue to be endangered by habitat loss, toxic chemicals, competition with domesticated pollinators and other threats from agriculture and industry.Farther west, an artist is at work on the windswept shores of Whidbey Island in Washington.
Researchers sought to bring back wild pollinators to counteract a growing dependence on honeybees, which at the time were suffering the height of colony collapse disorder, a phenomenon researchers now understand was possibly the result of a combination of toxic chemicals and disease. Reports of honeybee decline often lead people to become honeybee keepers themselves, a practice that, for native bees, implies greater competition and the possibility of disease.