the wild bees of new york: our insurance policy...

NEW YORK FRUIT QUARTERLY . VOLUME 23 . NUMBER 4 . WINTER 2015 17

The Wild Bees of New York: Our Insurance Policy Against Honey Bee DeclineBryan N. Danforth and Maria van DykeDepartmentofEntomology,CornellUniversity,Ithaca,NY

“We are lucky to have a diverse native bee fauna that can fill the gap if honeybees become more expensive or are simply unavailable to New York crop producers.””

Pollination is a valuable service provided by both managed bees (pri-marily honey bees, Apis mellifera) and wild, native bees. Bee pollina-tion is essential for the production of fruits, nuts, vegetables, spices,

stimulants (such as coffee), and edible oils (such as sun-flower and canola). Estimates of the economic contribution of pollination vary widely, but two recent studies give us a sense of the magnitude of the contribution pollina-tors make to the global and national economy. Gallai et al.

(2009) estimated that the contribution of pollination to the global economy was approximately $170 billion annually, and Calderone (2012), based on data for the US alone, estimated that pollination contributes over $15 bil-lion/year to the US economy. In New York, important pollinator- dependent crops include apple ($250 million/year), squash and pumpkin ($74 million/year), tomatoes ($47 million/year), strawberries ($7 million/year), cherries ($3 million/year), and pears ($2.5 million/year) (economic data from New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets; www.agriculture.ny.gov). Many of New York’s most high value fruits are entirely dependent on pol-linators for successful production. Based on our research on apples over the past seven years, there is a surprisingly diverse fauna of wild bees that contribute to apple pollination in NY. We have documented over 118 wild bee species visiting apple blossoms in surveys of NY apple orchards from Lake Ontario to the Hudson Valley (Russo et al. 2015). We have shown that wild bees are numerically abundant across orchards varying in size and management (Russo et al. 2015), that wild bees are highly effective pollinators on a per-visit basis (Park et al. 2015), and that wild bee diversity and abundance are correlated with apple fruit and seed set (Blitzer et al., in prep.). Apples are not the only crop that benefits from wild pollinators. Strawberries, pears, cherries, tomatoes and cucurbit crops are benefitting from a diverse wild pollinator fauna as well. In April, 2015, Governor Cuomo announced that New York State will establish a taskforce to develop a Pollinator Protection Plan to promote the health and stability of pollinator populations in New York State. A first step toward developing a comprehensive Pollinator Protection Plan is to accurately document the diversity of wild bees in New York. To that end, we have been developing a complete list of New York’s wild bees. Our goal is to accurately document what species occur in New York, which bee species are native and which are non-native, and as much information about the natural history, nesting biology, floral preferences, social behaviors as possible. This is essential baseline data for developing a comprehensive Pollinator Protection Plan for NY. We assembled our list of New York bee species using the American Museum of Natural History’s “Arthropod Easy Capture” database (Schuh et al. 2010, Schuh 2012). These data were originally gathered as part of an NSF-funded research grant to John Ascher, Jerome Rozen, Jr., and Douglas Yanega entitled “Collaborative Databasing of North American Bee

Figure2. Andrena (Melandrena) female on a dandelion(Taraxacum). Andrena are ground-nesting beesthat are important early spring pollinators ofapples, cherries, strawberries and many otherfloweringtrees.Photocredit:BryanDanforth

Figure1. Histogramshowingthedistributionofthenumberof species across the 42 bee genera known fromNew York. Our largest genera are Andrena andLasioglossum, followed by Nomada, Megachile, Osmia,andBombus.NewYorkhostsatotalof416wildbeespecies.

18 NEW YORK STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY

Collections within a global informatics network.” Specimen records come from major eastern North American insect collections, including American Museum of Natural History, Cornell University, University of Connecticut, and Rutgers University. We supplemented the list with regional (e.g., Giles & Ascher 2006, Matteson et al. 2008, Feteridge et al. 2008, Ascher et al. 2014) and crop-based (e.g., Gardner & Ascher 2006, Russo et al. 2015) surveys of bee diversity in New York. Note that this is likely an incomplete list of New York bees because no state survey has ever been conducted on the wild bees of New York State.

Bee Diversity in New York We estimate that there are a total of 416 bee species in New York state. Forty-two of the 425 genera of bees in the world (Michener 2007) occur in New York (Figure 1). Our most common (and speciose) genera are Andrena, Lasioglossum, Nomada, Sphecodes, Megachile, Colletes, Osmia, Hylaeus, Melissodes, Bombus, and Coelioxys (Figure 1). A survey of bee species in Pennsylvania (Donovall and vanEngelsdorp 2010) documented a total of 371 species, comparable to the number we report here for New York, but likely an underestimate given the size of Pennsylvania. The majority (54%) of bees in New York State are digger bees (ground-nesting, solitary bees, such as Andrena, Lasioglossum, Colletes, and Melissodes). Species of Andrena (Figure 2) are typical of ground-nesting bees in their life history. At the start of the nesting season (in the spring, summer, or fall, depending on the species), female Andrena begin constructing burrows in the soil. At the end of these subterranean burrows they construct brood cells, which are lined with waterproof secretions from the Dufour’s gland. Once a brood cell has been constructed, a female provisions it with a mixture of pollen and nectar collected from flowering plants in the vicinity of the nest. Foraging ranges in these solitary bees are small – on the order of 500 m maximum – so nests are typically close to the floral resources. Once the provisions have been collected, the pollen/nectar mixture is sculpted into a spherical pollen ball and an egg is laid on top. The brood cell is then closed and the female begins constructing a new brood cell. Brood cells range in depth from just a few inches to several feet. A typical solitary female might produce just 10–15 offspring over a period of two to three weeks of active foraging. While the majority of bees in New York State are ground-nesting, several species also make nests in preexisting cavities, such as twigs, hollow stems, beetle burrows, or in sites above ground. These aboveground, cavity nesters include the mason bees, the wool carder bees and various resin bees. Mason bees in New York State include genera such as Osmia, Hoplitis, Prochelostoma, and Heriades. Mason bees comprise roughly 7 percent of the species of bees in New York State. Other cavity- and stem-nesting bees include the leaf-cutter bees in the genus Megachile (Sheffield et al. 2011b), carder bees in the genus Anthidium, Pseudoanthidium, and Paranthidium, and the yellow-faced bees in the genus Hylaeus. Megachile females line their cells with circular pieces of leaf that they cut from rosebushes and other plants. Hylaeus females line their burrows (constructed in plant stems or other hollow tubes) with a cellophane-like material produced by the Dufour’s gland. Hylaeus are unusual bees because they carry pollen internally

and not externally, as do most pollen-collecting bees. A n o t h e r important group of bees are the carpenter bees. In North America we have both small (Ceratina) and large (Xylocopa) carpenter bees. These bees con-struct nests in wood or preexisting cavities. Xylocopa virginica is a com-mon bee in New York State (Figure 3). Nests are conspicuous because males hover in front of the nests (typically located in fence posts, wooden park benches, and houses) and engage in aggressive territorial battles. Cleptoparasitic bees comprise 23 percent of the bee species in New York. The two largest genera of cleptoparasitic bees in New York are Sphecodes and Nomada. Parasitic bees are fascinating creatures. They have lost the morphological structures associated with nest construction and pollen collection in most other bees. Instead of constructing and provisioning their own brood cells, parasitic bees enter the nests of other bees (usually when the host female is away) and lay their eggs within the host nest. Once the host female has laid her egg and closed the cell, the parasitic larva hatches from its own egg and kills either the host egg or young larva, then feeds on the host’s pollen. Parasitic bees have devious methods for hiding their eggs from the host females. For example, Nomada and relatives (in the subfamily Nomadinae) put their eggs in the cell wall of the host bee’s nest. So far, the great majority of bees we have mentioned are solitary (or parasitic). Important eusocial bees in New York State include both advanced eusocial taxa in which queens and workers are morphologically distinct (such as Apis mellifera, the introduced honey bee) and primitively eusocial taxa, in which queens and workers are distinguishable from each other based only on size or behavior. Important primitively eusocial taxa include Bombus (bumblebees; Apidae), as well as Augochlorella, Halictus, and some species of Lasioglossum (Halictidae). We estimate that approximately 19 percent of the bee species in New York State are eusocial.

Introduced (Non-native) Bees There are known to be a total of 23 introduced bees in North America, and 21 of them occur in New York State (Ascher 2001, Cane 2003, Sheffield et al. 2011a). All of the known introduced bees have been transported from the Old World (Eurasia) either accidentally or through intentional introduction. The most common and conspicuous of our introduced European bees is the honeybee, Apis mellifera, which is managed commercially for honey and pollination services. Other introduced bees include species of Megachile, Hylaeus, Chelostoma, Hoplitis, Anthidium and Andrena (Ascher 2001, Miller et al. 2002, Cane 2003, Sheffield et al. 2011a). Ascher (2001) estimated that accidentally

Figure3. Xylocopa virginica female nectaringon an apple flower in the earlyspring. Xylocopa females nest inwood.Photocredit:KentLoeffler


introduced bees account for 0.5 percent of the North American bee species. While they comprise a small number of species, introduced bees make up, in some cases, a large proportion of the individuals in New York State. This is especially true of the European honeybee. Most accidentally introduced bees are stem- or cavity-nesting species. These species (in the Hylaeinae, Megachilidae, and Xylocopinae) are easily transported in plant materials (e.g., wood) or in man-made materials. Nonnative bee species can have a negative impact on native species for a variety of reasons. Nonnative species may compete with native species for floral and nesting resources, they may carry pathogens that can infect native species, and they can cause mating disruption when they are closely related to native species (Stout and Morales 2009). Unfortunately, we know very little about the impact of nonnative bees on native eastern North American bees. Transcontinental transport of bumblebee colonies for greenhouse tomato pollination is thought to have led to the introduction of nonnative bumblebee pathogens — specifically microsporidian pathogens in the genus Nosema (Cameron et al. 2011, Cordes et al. 2012). Introduction of nonnative pathogens is one of the leading hypotheses for the decline in several bumblebee species in North America, including Bombus affinis, B. terricola, and B. pensylvanicus. Osmia cornifrons, also known as the horn-faced bee, is a nonnative mason bee that was intentionally introduced into the US (along with Osmia taurus) for fruit pollination in the 1970s (Batra 1979, 1982). Both non-native Osmia species have host-plant ranges and nesting requirements that are similar to those of our native “blue orchard bee” (Osmia lignaria). Apparent declines in Osmia lignaria in the eastern US may be linked to the arrival of O. cornifrons and O. taurus, but a careful examination of the historical data on the abundance of O. lignaria has not been conducted. A recent report by Hedtke et al. (2015) indicates that feral populations of O. cornifrons in the US host Ascosphaera pathogens originally reported from Japan, suggesting that intentional introduction of O. cornifrons has led to the unintentional introduction of a nonnative fungal pathogen into North American Osmia populations. Whether this pathogen is present in O. lignaria populations has not yet been established. Megachile sculpturalis, also known as the giant resin bee (Figure 4), was introduced into the southeastern US (North Carolina) in the ear-ly 1990s (Mangum and Brooks 1997, Mangum and Sum-ner 2003, Hinojosa-Díaz et al. 2005, Ma-ier 2009). It has since spread throughout much of eastern North America (as far north as Ontar-io), as far south as Alabama (Mangum and Sumner 2003), and was recently re-ported as far west as Kansas (Hinojosa-

Well built and reliable, these boxes will protect your produce. In bulk, $6.50 each

Hamlin Sawmill1873 Redman Rd. Hamlin, NY 14464

[email protected]

www.OneBushelCrate.com

One Bushel Crates

Figure4. Megachile sculpturalis mating pair.Thisspeciesisanon-nativeinvaderintroduced from China in the early1990s.Todaythisbeeoccursacrossmuch of eastern North America.Photo credit: Eric Barbier andPierre-JeanBernard

Díaz 2008). The bee is also a nonnative invader that is spreading across much of western Europe from Belgium (Vereecken and Barbier 2009) to Italy (Quaranta et al. 2014). This large, aggres-sive resin bee has been reported to forcibly usurp active nests of our native large carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica). Roulston and Malfi (2012) reported an attack on an active carpenter bee nest in which the giant resin bee attacked and physically re-moved adult carpenter bees guarding the nest entrance. During the attack the resin bee grabbed the legs of the carpenter bee, bit the carpenter bee near the head, and made repeated attempts to sting it. In addition, the resin bee appeared to use sticky resins to gum up the wings of the carpenter bee—a remarkable case of what appears to be chemical warfare in the bee world. Laporte and Minckley (2012) reported a similar example of nest usurpa-tion that included the use of sticky resin against the resident carpenter bees in Rochester, NY. The rapid spread of the giant resin bee throughout the eastern US (and Europe) and the re-ports of nest usurpation suggest that this bee may have a very significant impact on native carpenter bee populations across an enormous geographic range.

Rare, Threatened, and Endangered Bees We know very little about the conservation status of most bee species in New York State because there is no long-term monitoring program for wild bees. However, one way to moni-tor historical changes in wild bee populations is to use specimen record data from natural history museums, such as the Ameri-can Museum of Natural History and the Cornell University In-sect Collection [http://cuic.entomology.cornell.edu/]. Museum


records can give us a historical perspective on the change in the absolute and relative abundance of a species over time. A re-cent study (Bartomeus et al. 2013) examined historical museum records for 438 bee species across the eastern US in order to identify evidence of significant declines over the past 140 years. Sample sizes were sufficient to examine historical trends in 187 species. Of those 187, 49 species occurring in NY were found to be in decline or rare and potentially threatened. Bumblebees, because of their large size and ease of observation, are perhaps the best known bees in terms of conservation status. A number of eastern bumblebee species are known to have experienced significant declines over the past 30 years. Bombus terricola, B. bohemicus, B. insularis, B. pensylvanicus, and B. terricola are all in decline over part or all of their ranges. Bombus affinis, a common eastern bumblebee prior to 1996, is now extremely rare and may be close to extinction. The causes of these declines are not clear but may include loss of natural habitat, exposure to pesticides, and the arrival of nonnative pathogens (especially Nosema bombi from Europe; Cameron et al. 2011, Cordes et al. 2012). Besides the bumblebees, which are well-studied and charismatic pollinators, the list of declining bee species detected by Bartomeus et al. (2013) includes solitary ground-nesting bees (e.g., Andrena, Melissodes, and Colletes [Figure 5]), solitary stem- and cavity-nesting bees (e.g., Osmia and Megachile), social ground-nesting bees (e.g., Lasioglossum subgenus Dialictus), narrow host-plant specialists (e.g., Peponapis pruinosa, some Andrena and Colletes), and cleptoparasites (e.g., Coelioxys and Epeolus). The study of Bartomeus et al. (2013) is likely an underestimate of the number of threatened bee species in the Northeast because the rarest bees were excluded from the analysis because of their small sample size. Bees in the family Melittidae are among the rarest of New York’s bees. Melittidae is an enigmatic, seemingly ancient group of bees with its greatest diversity in southern Africa. Virtually all melittid bees are narrow host-plant specialists (Michez 2008) and many groups seem to prefer sandy soils for nesting. In New York we have just five species in two genera: Melitta and Macropis. Melitta eickworti and Melitta americana are both specialists on Vaccinium (Ericaceae). Melitta americana can be common in and around blueberry and cranberry fields (Payette 2013, Cariveau et al. 2013), but Melitta eickworti is restricted to shady forest understory with deerberry (Vaccinium stamineum; Cane et al. 1985). Macropis includes highly specialized “oil bees” that are narrow host-plant specialists on Lysimachia (yellow loosestrife). Female Macropis nest in humid, boggy habitats (where their host-plants occur) and they use the floral oils for lining the brood cell as well as for larval nutrition (Cane et al. 1983). The collection of floral oils may be an adaptation for nesting in saturated, marshy soils along streams, rivers and on the edge of ponds and lakes. In New York we have three Macropis species, all of which are rare and geographically restricted. Their narrow host-plant preferences and obligate association with oil-producing host-plants (Lysimachia) contributes to both the rarity of these bees as well as their status as potentially endangered pollinators. Epeoloides pilosula is likely the most threatened and endangered bee species in New York (and the Northeast). E. pilosula is a cleptoparasite of Macropis, a rare bee for reasons outlined above. E. pilosula has not always been rare. There

Figure5. Colletes compactus males in sleeping aggregation. In somegroupsofsolitarybees,malesgathertogetherintheeveningtoform sleeping aggregations. These aggregations may providesome protection from predators but we do not know verymuch about why bees form these aggregations.This species isreportedtobeindeclinebasedontheanalysisofBartomeusetal.2013.Photocredit:SusanBarnett.

are many records of E. pilosula prior to 1940 and the known range of E. pilosula includes 18 states and 4 Canadian provinces (Sheffield et al. 2004, Wagner and Ascher 2008). However, in the past 60 years, the bee has only been collected four times: in Montana (1958), Ontario (1960), Nova Scotia (2002), and Connecticut (2008). This bee is a prime candidate for listing as an endangered species in North America.

Conclusions Many of the wild bees we have described above are contributing economically to New York agricultural production. One can view these wild bees as New York agriculture’s insurance policy against honeybee decline. We are lucky to have a diverse native bee fauna that can fill the gap if honeybees become more expensive or are simply unavailable to New York crop producers. Wild bees do not seem to suffer from the same diseases and parasites that are linked to declines in honey bees in North America. NY residents and agricultural producers can sleep well at night knowing that New York’s wild bees are hard at work pollinating our crops – and they do it for free!

Acknowledgements We are very grateful to John Ascher (University of Singapore and American Museum of Natural History), Jerome G. Rozen, Jr. (American Museum of Natural History), and Douglas Yanega (University of California Riverside) for access to the Arthropod Easy Capture dataset, which was essential to the creation of a list of bee species currently present in New York state. We are also grateful to the members of my laboratory who provided input on this report. Finally, we are grateful to Art Agnello for editing this issue of the NY Fruit Quarterly.

References Cited Ascher, J. S. (2001). Hylaeus hyalinatus Smith, a European bee

new to North America, with notes on other adventive bees


(Hymenoptera: Apoidea). Proceedings of the Entomological Society Washington 103: 184–90.

Ascher, J. S., S. Kornbluth, and R. G. Goelet (2014). Bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila) of Gardiners Island, Suffolk County, New York. Northeastern Naturalist 21(1): 47–71.

Bartomeus, I., J. S. Ascher, J. Gibbs, B. N. Danforth, D. L. Wagner, S. M. Hedtke, and R. Winfree (2013). Historical changes in northeastern United States bee pollinators related to shared ecological traits. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 110(12): 4656–4660.

Batra, S.W.T. (1979). Osmia cornifrons and Pithitis smaragula, two asian bees introduced into the United States for crop pollination. Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station Special Miscellaneous Publications 1: 307–312.

Batra, S.W.T. (1982). The hornfaced bee for efficient pollination of small farm orchards. In: H. W. Kerr, Jr. and L. V. Kantson, Eds., Research for Small Farms. USDA Miscellaneous Publications 1422: 117–120.

Blitzer, E. J., J. Gibbs, M. G. Park, B. N. Danforth (2015). Pollination services for apple depend on functionally diverse wild bee communities. Agriculture, Ecosystems and the Environment [in press]

Calderone, N. W. (2012). Insect pollinated crops, insect pollinators and US agriculture: trend analysis of aggregate data for the period 1992–2009. PLoS One 7, e37235.

Cameron, S. A., J. D. Lozier, J. P. Strange, J. B. Koch, N. Cordes, L. F. Solter, and T. L. Griswold (2011). Patterns of widespread decline in North American bumblebees. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 108: 662–667.

Cane, J. H. (2003). Exotic nonsocial bees (Hymenoptera: Apiformes) in North America: ecological implications. In: For Nonnative Crops, Whence Pollinators of the Future. Edited by Strickler, K., Cane, J. H. Lanham: Proceedings of the Entomological Society of America, pp. 113–126.

Cane, J. H., G. C. Eickwort, F. R. Wesley, and J. Spielholz (1983). Foraging, grooming and mate-seeking behaviors of Macropis nuda (Hymenoptera, Melittidae) and use of Lysimachia ciliata (Primulaceae) oils in larval provisions and cell linings. American Midland Naturalist 110(2): 257–264.

Cane, J. H., G. C. Eickwort, F. R. Wesley and J. Spielholz (1985). Pollination ecology of Vaccinium stamineum (Ericaceae: Vaccinioideae). Am. J. Bot. 72: 135–142.

Cariveau, D. P., N. M. Williams, F. E. Benjamin, and R. Winfree (2013). Response diversity to land use occurs but does not consistently stabilise ecosystem services provided by native pollinators. Ecology Letters 16: 903–911.

Colla, S. R., Ascher, J. S., Arduser, M., Cane, J., Deyrup, M., Droege, S., Gibbs, J., Griswold, T., Hall, H. G., Henne, C., et al. (2012). Documenting persistence of most eastern North American bee species (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila) to 1990–2009. Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 85: 14–22.

Cordes, N., W.-F. Huang, J. P. Strange, S. A. Cameron, T. L. Griswold, J. D. Lozier, and L. F. Solter (2012). Interspecific geographic distribution and variation of the pathogens Nosema bombi and Crithidia species in United States bumble bee populations. Journal of Invertebrate Pathology 109: 209–216.

Donovall, L. R., and D. vanEngelsdorp (2010). A checklist of the

bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea) of Pennsylvania. Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 83: 7–24.

Feteridge, E. D., J. S. Ascher, G.A. Langellotto (2008). The bee fauna of residential gardens in a suburb of New York City (Hymenoptera: Apoidea). Annals the Entomological Society of America 101(6): 1067–1077.

Gallai, N., J.-M. Salles, J. Settele, and B. E. Vaissière (2009). Economic valuation of the vulnerability of world agriculture confronted with pollinator decline. Ecological Economics 68: 810–821.

Gardner, K. E. and J. S. Ascher (2006). Notes on the native bee pollinators in New York apple orchards. Journal of the New York Entomological Society 114(1): 86–91.

Giles, V., and J. S. Ascher (2006). A survey of the bees of the Black Rock Forest Preserve, New York. Journal of Hymenoptera Research 15: 208–231.

Hedtke S. M., E. J. Blitzer, G.A. Montgomery, and B. N. Danforth (2015). Introduction of non-native pollinators can lead to trans-continental movement of bee-associated fungi. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0130560

Hinojosa-Díaz, I. A., Yáñez-Ordóñez, O., Chen, G., Peterson, A. T., and Engel, M. S. (2005). The North American invasion of the giant resin bee (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae). Journal of Hymenoptera Research 14: 69–77.

Hinojosa-Díaz, I. (2008). The giant resin bee making its way west: first record in Kansas (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae). ZooKeys 1: 67–71.

Laport, R. G., and Minckley, R. L. (2012). Occupation of active Xylocopa virginica nests by the recently invasive Megachile sculpturalis in upstate New York. Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 85: 384–386.

Maier, C. T. (2009). New distributional records of three alien species of Megachilidae (Hymenoptera) from Connecticut and nearby states. Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington 111: 775–784.

Mangum, W. A., and R. W. Brooks (1997). First records of Megachile (Callomegachile) sculpturalis Smith (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae) in the continental United States. Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 70(2): 146–148.

Mangum, W.A., and S. Sumner (2003). A survey of the North American range of Megachile (Callomegachile) sculpturalis, an adventive species in North America. Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 76: 658–662.

Matteson, K. C., J. S. Ascher, and G. A. Langellotto. (2008). Bee richness and abundance in New York city urban gardens. Annals of the Entomological Society of America 101: 140–150.

Michener, C. D. (2007). The Bees of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Michez, D., S. Patiny, P. Rasmont, K. Timmermann, and N. J. Vereecken (2008). Phylogeny and host-plant evolution in Melittidae sl (Hymenoptera: Apoidea). Apidologie 39: 146–162.

Miller, S. R., R. Gaebel, R. J. Mitchell, and M. Arduser (2002). Occurrence of two species of old world bees, Anthidium manicatum and A. oblongatum (Apoidea: Megachilidae), in northern Ohio and southern Michigan. Great Lakes Entomologist 35: 65–70.

Park, M. G., R. A. Raguso, J. E. Losey, B. N. Danforth (2015).


Plan to attend the 2016 Empire State Producers Expo!

Organized cooperatively by Cornell Cooperative Extension Empire State Potato Growers

NYS Berry Growers Association NYS Flower Industries, Inc.NYS Horticultural Society

NYS Farmers’ Direct Marketing Committee NYS Vegetable Growers Association

Cornell University

For additional details contact the NYS Vegetable Growers

Association at (585)-993-0775

or [email protected]

Growing for the Health of New York

JANUARY 19-21, 2016Oncenter Convention Center

800 South State St., Syracuse, NY 13202-3017(315) 435-8000 www.oncenter.org

Per-visit pollinator performance and regional importance of wild Bombus and Andrena (Melandrena) compared to the managed honey bee in New York apple orchards. Apidologie [published online 25 August 2015, 10.1007/s13592-015-0383-9]

Payette, A. (2013). First record of the bee Melitta americana (Smith) (Hymenoptera: Melittidae) for Quebec and Canada. Canadian Field-Naturalist 127(1): 60–63.

Quaranta, M., A. Sommaruga, P. Balzarini, A. Felicioli, and others (2014). A new species for the bee fauna of Italy: Megachile sculpturalis continues its colonization of Europe. Bulletin of Insectology 67: 287–293.

Roulston, T. and R. Malfi (2012). Aggressive eviction of the eastern carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica (Linnaeus)) from its nest by the Giant Resin Bee (Megachile sculpturalis Smith) Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society, 85(4): 387–388.

Russo, L., M. G. Park, J. Gibbs, B. N. Danforth (2015). The challenge of accurately documenting bee species richness in agroecosystems: bee diversity in eastern apple orchards. Ecology and Evolution 5(17): 3531–3540.

Schuh, R. T. (2012). Integrating specimen databases and revisionary systematics. Zookeys 209: 255–267.

Schuh, R. T., S. Hewson-Smith, and J. S. Ascher (2010). Specimen databases: a case study in entomology using web-based software. American Entomologist 56(4): 206–216.

Sheffield, C. S. S. Dumesh, M. Cheryomina (2011a). Hylaeus punctatus (Hymenoptera: Colletidae), a bee species new to Canada, with notes on other non-native species. Journal of

the Entomological Society of Ontario 142: 29–43.Sheffield, C. S., C. Ratti, L. Packer, and T. Griswold (2011b).

Leafcutter and mason bees of the genus Megachile Latreille (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae) in Canada and Alaska. Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification 18: 1–107.

Sheffield, C. S., S. M. Rigby, R. F. Smith, and P. G. Kevan (2004). The rare cleptoparasitic bee Epeoloides pilosula (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Apidae) discovered in Nova Scotia, Canada, with distributional notes. Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 77: 161–164.

Stout, J. C. and C. L. Morales (2009). Ecological impacts of invasive alien species on bees. Apidologie 40: 388–409.

Vereecken, N. J. and E. Barbier (2009). Premières données sur la présence de l’abeille asiatique Megachile (Callomegachile) sculpturalis Smith (Hymenoptera, Megachilidae) en Europe. Osmia 3: 4–6.

Wagner, D. L., and J. S. Ascher (2008). Rediscovery of Epeoloides pilosula (Cresson) (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in New England. Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 81: 81–83.

Bryan Danforth is a professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Entomology. He studies the diversity and evolution of bees. Maria van Dyke is an outreach support specialist studying the role of wild bees in apple pollination. She is currently developing training and educational materials for the Northeast Pollinator Partnership (http://www.northeastpollinatorpartnership.org/). [contact: [email protected]]

the wild bees of new york: our insurance policy...

Documents