Of the 100 crops that provide 90 percent of the world’s food, over 70 are pollinated by bees, according to a recent U.N. report.
“Bees are the primary pollinators for most flowering plants,” Olivia Nater, a UW student studying bees for her master’s thesis, said.
“I find bees fascinating,” Nater said. “They are incredibly important to the wellbeing of humans and the ecosystem.”
Nater is interested in the effects of climate change on native bee species such as bumblebees, sweat bees and mason bees.
“The climate in Wyoming is changing,” she said. “The average temperatures have increased by 1.3 degrees centigrade since the 1970s.”
“Through my master’s work, I am hoping to find out whether climate warming is shifting the abundance over time of bees and plant hosts,” Nater said. “And whether this may be leading to plant-pollinator mismatch, whereby bees suffer from reduced resources and plants have reduced pollination and reproductive success.”
Her research involves catching and counting the number of bees in a specific location.
“We have three field sites within 25 miles of Laramie. The sites have remained virtually untouched since the last bee counts in the 1970s,” Nater said.
“We use two different methods for catching the bees: insect nets and bee cups,” Nater said. Bee cups are basically cups painted in colors that attract bees filled with a little water and dish soap, which reduces the surface tension of the water, she said.
“We take weekly samples through the growing season from May to late September.” she said. Last year, there were two peaks in the blooming cycle of plants. One was in late September. She did not expect the same thing this year because the area has not had the amount of moisture as last year, Nater said.
The areas were Nater catches honey bees is divided into quadrants. As part of her data collection, Nater must count every flower in each quadrant. “Sometimes it can take hours to count all of them,” she said.
By comparing these two sets of data the number of bees compared to the number of flowers Nater should be able to answer her research question. She has been researching bees for the last two years and plans to devote one more year to analyze and finalize
her results.
Her research is funded through the University of Wyoming Agricultural Experiment Station. Dr. Scott Shaw and Dr. Carlos Martinez del Rio co-authored the grant proposal, Nater said.
“Dr. Shaw is the curator of the UW insect museum, which will receive all the bees we catch during the course of this study,” she said.
