Floral resources enhance erosion mitigation and wild bee conservation

Pollination by bees plays a critical role in the viability of life on this planet from food crop productivity, to biodiversity of ecosystems, however their populations, globally, are in decline. Contributing factors include pesticides, climate change, diseases, and invasives, but most notably, are habitat degradation and fragmentation due to agricultural intensification and urbanization. Research has shown that conservation and restoration of land can help to restore bee abundance and diversity. These bee friendly landscapes don’t have to reside solely in parks or forested areas, they can also be assembled in and around cities, towns or along roadsides. Another opportunity to establish habitat which will attract and provide nectar for bees is eroded lands. Recommendation for restoration of eroded land usually includes planting with a number of quick growing native and non-native grasses, which do little for bee conservation. In our study we incorporated angiosperms into an erosion mitigation seed mix specifically selected for their ability to attract bees, and thrive in the Piedmont region of Georgia. We found plots that incorporated these flowering plants had a greater abundance, richness and diversity of bees compared to those plots that only contained grass. Of the 12 angiosperms selected, the most successful were Rudbeckia hirta (Black eye Susan), Chamaecrista fasciculata (partridge pea), Eryngium yuccifolium (rattlesnake master), Pycnanthemum muticum (mountain mint), and Coreopsis lanceolata (Lanceleaf coreopsis). The most numerous bees collected by “bee to flower” or “sweeps” were in the genera Lasioglossum, Halictus and Bombus.