Native Pollinator Decline

The Invisible Majority

When the public hears "save the bees," the image that forms is a honey bee - Apis mellifera - the striped, hive-dwelling, honey-producing species that is, in fact, not native to North America. Honey bees were introduced from Europe in the 1620s. They are a domesticated agricultural animal, as much as dairy cows or laying hens.

The native bee fauna of the United States includes approximately 4,000 species across multiple families: mining bees (Andrenidae), sweat bees (Halictidae), mason and leafcutter bees (Megachilidae), carpenter bees (Xylocopinae), and bumblebees (Bombini), among others. Most are solitary - a single female constructs a nest, provisions it with pollen, lays eggs, and dies without ever forming a colony. A few are social (bumblebees form small annual colonies of 50-400 individuals). None produce honey in harvestable quantities. None live in commercially managed hives.

And collectively, they pollinate approximately 80% of all flowering plant species in North American ecosystems. For many native plant species, native bees are the only effective pollinators. Honey bees, while generalist foragers, are structurally unable to pollinate flowers that require specific buzz frequencies (tomatoes, blueberries, cranberries), specific body shapes, or specific foraging behaviors that only co-evolved native species provide.

The Data Gap

The most basic challenge in native pollinator conservation is that population data is sparse, fragmented, and inconsistent. There is no equivalent of the Bee Informed Partnership's annual colony loss survey for native bees. There is no USDA census of wild bee populations. Most native bee species have never been systematically surveyed.

What data exists comes from:

• Museum collection records. Historical specimen collections document what species were present at specific locations and dates. Comparing current surveys to historical records reveals changes in abundance and distribution. But the temporal and geographic coverage is uneven, and collection effort varies enormously across regions and decades.
• USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab. The primary federal program for native bee monitoring. Operates with limited funding and staff. Maintains photographic records and taxonomic resources but cannot conduct population surveys at continental scale.
• Academic research. University researchers conduct population studies for specific species or guilds in specific locations. These studies provide valuable data but cover a tiny fraction of the geographic and taxonomic range.
• Community science. iNaturalist, Bumble Bee Watch, and similar platforms generate occurrence records from citizen observers. These data have significant detection biases (concentrated near population centers, biased toward large and recognizable species) but provide geographic coverage that professional surveys cannot match.

The synthesis of available data - notably the IUCN Red List assessments for North American bumblebees - indicates widespread decline. Among bumblebees (the best-studied native bee group), several species have experienced range contractions exceeding 50% over the past two decades. Bombus affinis (the rusty-patched bumblebee) was listed as federally endangered in 2017 - the first bee species in the contiguous US to receive that protection. Bombus occidentalis (the western bumblebee) has virtually disappeared from much of its historical range.

The Threats

Native pollinators face the same stressor suite as managed honey bees - pesticides, disease, climate change - plus additional threats specific to their biology:

Habitat Loss

Most native bees nest in the ground (bare soil or sandy banks) or in pre-existing cavities (hollow stems, beetle tunnels in dead wood, abandoned rodent burrows). Agricultural intensification eliminates both nesting substrate and floral resources. A field margin converted to crop production removes the bare ground that mining bees need for nesting and the wildflowers that feed them. The loss is simultaneous: food and housing disappear together.

Pesticide Exposure

Native bees are exposed to the same agricultural pesticides as honey bees but receive none of the regulatory consideration. EPA pollinator risk assessments for pesticide registration focus almost exclusively on honey bees as a surrogate species. The assumption that honey bee toxicity data predicts native bee risk is poorly validated - body size differences, behavioral differences, and life history differences all affect exposure and sensitivity.

Pathogen Spillover

Commercial bumble bee colonies (Bombus impatiens) used for greenhouse tomato pollination harbor parasites - particularly Nosema bombi and Crithidia bombi - that can spill over to wild bumblebee populations when greenhouse bees forage outdoors. The commercial bumble bee industry ships millions of colonies annually. The pathogen spillover risk to wild populations is documented but largely unregulated.

Competition from Honey Bees

In areas with high managed honey bee density (particularly near major agricultural pollination events like California almond bloom), native bees face competition for floral resources. A single honey bee colony deploys 20,000 to 40,000 foragers. Thousands of colonies placed in a landscape for pollination can overwhelm the available nectar and pollen, displacing native bees from their food sources. The research on competitive displacement is mixed but sufficient to warrant concern in resource-limited landscapes.

The Funding Imbalance

Federal pollinator research and conservation funding is overwhelmingly directed toward honey bees. The USDA's Agricultural Research Service maintains honey bee research laboratories (Baton Rouge, Tucson, Beltsville) with combined budgets that dwarf funding for native pollinator research. The USDA-NIFA competitive grants program funds pollinator research, but proposals focused on honey bee health consistently receive more funding than those focused on native pollinators.

The imbalance reflects the economic structure of pollinator policy: managed honey bees have a quantifiable agricultural value ($20-30 billion in pollination services). Native pollinators' agricultural contribution is real ($3-8 billion estimated) but harder to quantify, and their ecological contribution - pollinating wild plants, maintaining plant community diversity, supporting ecosystem function - has no market price.

The result: the species with an industry lobby (honey bees) receives research funding proportional to its economic visibility. The 4,000 species without a lobby receive funding proportional to their political invisibility.

Where The Apiary Project Stands

1. Monitoring infrastructure. Federal investment in a systematic native bee monitoring program - equivalent in scope and rigor to the Breeding Bird Survey or the Christmas Bird Count - is the foundational need. Conservation without data is guesswork. A national native bee monitoring network, combining professional surveys with structured community science, would provide the population trend data needed to identify species at risk before they reach crisis levels.
2. Funding rebalance. Federal pollinator research and conservation funding should reflect the ecological importance of native pollinators. This doesn't mean reducing honey bee research - it means expanding the total funding pool so that native pollinator research receives resources proportional to its conservation urgency.
3. Pesticide risk assessment reform. EPA pollinator risk assessments should include native bee species - at minimum, representative species from major families (a ground-nesting solitary bee, a cavity-nesting mason bee, a bumblebee) in addition to the honey bee surrogate. Single-species risk assessment for a 4,000-species fauna is inadequate.
4. Habitat with native bees in mind. Pollinator habitat programs (CRP, highway corridors, urban plantings) should be designed with native bee nesting requirements in mind - not just flowers, but bare ground, dead wood, and stem bundles. A wildflower meadow without nesting substrate supports transient visitors but not resident populations.

The Apiary Project's name references the apiary - the managed honey bee yard. But this organization's mission is pollinator welfare broadly. The 4,000 native bee species in the US are pollinators. Their decline is our concern. Their conservation is part of our advocacy.