Beekeeping Question?

Question

What are some measures being used to protect and conserve pollinating insects like honey bees?

thanks if you can help and if you cant..2 points for you..

Answer 1

I don't know of any measures specifically directed
toward conservation of pollinating insects. Any
protection of a particular kind of ecosystem will
automatically aid the pollinators. There is some
misinformation in the first answer you received.

First, there are no indigenous American honeybees, they are introduced from Europe. Two, both American and European honeybees do indeed have
stings, they have just been bred to be reluctant to
use them. For native American plants, the normal
pollinators were native insects, prior to the
introduction of honeybees. If honeybees are
unable to, or do not, pollinate them it is some
native insect that needs to be conserved to insure
their pollination.

Answer 2

Sometimes, bees are brought in to pollinate orchards or fields of flowers, which is good for the bees and good for the crops. I guess that's more commercial, but at least there are "professional" bees used for pollination.

Aggressive Africanized bees are taking over traditional honeybee habitats. European and American honeybees don't have stingers and are fairly peaceful. I think the rise of the "Killer Bee" urban legend probably reflects this change in bees--people are recognizing that indigenous honeybees from the Americas and Europe are much nicer and more pleasant and they've developed folklore about how the invading bees are much meaner and strip victims of their flesh like piranhas (whatever version you've heard of the story.)

Sometimes, people build little "bee houses" or put out tubes or boxes for bees to live in over the winter.

Bees are cool. I've been stung by a number of nasty waspy-type things, but I still love 'em. I saw a thing on Nature (PBS.org) about this moth that Darwin thought pollinated a rare orchid. He hadn't seen the moth, but he assumed there was a moth with, like, a 12-inch-long proboscis that fed (and pollinated) an orchid with a really long pollen tube.

So this dude went to some rain forest somewhere (check their website) and sat...and sat... and sat...and finally caught the long-tongued moth on camera! It was just like Darwin thought!

Pollinators are cool. I personally catch and release them when they come in my house. I also plant stuff like butterfly weed (Asclepidaceae) and sedum to feed them--planting pollinator-friendly plants and flowers can help out.

Answer 3

I don't think I can compete with that. Who's stalking who, muuuhhhaaa, how was that, ha.