Bee Biodiversity Boosts Crop Yields

Research from North Carolina State University shows that blueberries produce more seeds and larger berries if they are visited by more diverse bee species, allowing farmers to harvest significantly more pounds of fruit per acre. "We wanted to understand the functional role of diversity," says Dr. Hannah Burrack, an associate professor of entomology at NC State and co-author of a paper on the research. "And we found that there is a quantifiable benefit of having a lot of different types of bees pollinating a crop." The researchers looked at blueberries in North Carolina because it is an economically important and well understood crop that relies on insect pollination. read more

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