Bumblebees dive in to fill a void
Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - 18:49
in Mathematics & Economics
Native pollinators such as these fat, fuzzy bumblebees, once an overlooked sideshow in the insect world, are gaining widespread appreciation among everyone from backyard gardeners to big-time farmers. That's because European honeybees, the pollination mainstay of commercial agriculture, continue to struggle, with bee keepers routinely losing 30 percent of their bees every winter. Yet farmers count on those bees to pollinate some $15 billion in crops annually.