Can we afford this BUZZ TOWN?!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Are bee habitats getting GENTRIFIED? Today’s urban gardens are full of harvest crops and ornamental flowers. Better place for bees than an empty lot with unkempt weeds, right? RIGHT?
Enter Frances Sivakoff and team from Ohio State University. They monitored eight of each habitat type in Cleveland. Then they collected nearly three-thousand bees over three years! And?
Vacant lots had way more bees! Urban gardens had nearly seventy percent less worker bees! Bees preferred the overgrown wild plants to the manicured specialties.
Simple taste!
To maximize conservation, the researchers believe we should maintain vacant lots along with urban gardens.
Hey nosy Ned Flanders! That’s why my backyard’s so weedy.
Did it for the bees!
Reference:
Sivakoff, F.S., Prajzner, S.P., Gardiner, M.M. Unique Bee Communities within Vacant Lots and Urban Farms Result from Variation in Surrounding Urbanization Intensity Sustainability 10, 1926 (2018). doi:10.3390/su10061926