Urban Pollination: sustain native bees & urban crops

I think any research that involves kids, growing food, and enlarges our knowledge of bees and the impact we have on the bee population (positive and negative) in how we move through their environment is important research to support. Glad to do that!

Thanks so much to everyone for your kind comments and support!! We are truly humbled. @bmoisset - You are totally right! We were wrong to imply that bumble bees are the only bees capable of buzz pollination. I've changed the language in the text to reflect this! If you have any other suggestions, please let us know. I think carpenters might be a little tougher to wrangle for greenhouse use since they are not social. The commercially sold bumble bee hives are convenient for greenhouse use since there are so many of them in one unit, and this makes them a bit easier to manage.

I've had the opportunity to meet both of these researchers in the past, and I can say from experience that they are deserving of our support for this (and many more) projects.

A worthy project. It is important to engage children early on and this is a very effective way to do it. One little suggestion: you say that "(honeybees and other bees can’t buzz pollinate)". In fact, many native bees are excellent buzz pollinators, for instance blueberry bees, azalea bees and many others. Carpenter bees have even been used for buzz pollination of tomatoes, although, perhaps there are problems in using them in green houses. http://www.webbee.org.br/bpi/solitary/livro_04.pdf#page=200. Page 208

This project is so cute!!

Would love to see same project carried out in other cities too. Maybe some other biology department???

Amazing work. I often think it's amazing how much we dont even know what we don't know!