#insect declines

Honeybees shouldn’t be the focus of pollinator conservation. Take it from an entomology student, honeybees often times actually hurt native pollinator populations.

Some facts about honeybees and their ecology in the US:

In case you don’t know, the most common honeybee species in the Unites States is actually an introduced species from Western Europe. It’s not a native species.

Honeybees are vast in population, and often out-compete other native pollinators for resources, such as food and shelter.

Honeybees actually really suck at pollination in comparison to native pollinators. Like really. It’s been shown to be detrimental to local plant reproduction to rely on honeybees for pollination.

Honeybees out-compete birds for nesting spots.

Honeybees were brought to the United States to be used as an agricultural tool, not to help native species of plants or pollinators.

So much has been written about the ‘insect apocalypse’; so many books, papers and articles are appearing all the time, that it can be difficult to make sense of it all. Unfortunately, and although there are a lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ and caveats, things do look rather alarming, particularly when we take a global perspective. Rather than trying to summarise the vast literature, I thought it would…