Professor Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey
There is a widespread perception that bees, in general, are creatures of open habitats. However, this perception may be wrong for spring-flying bees in the northeastern USA. In April and May, northeastern forests provide excellent bee habitat due to the flowering of spring ephemeral wildflowers along with most species of trees and shrubs. Thus, during the spring northeastern forests contain more bees than do more open habitats, although this trend reverses later in the season. Many native bee species, which evolved when the northeast was a predominantly forested region, share the phenology of being 'on the wing' (active as adults) only in the spring. Recent work from my lab group estimated that one third of the bee species native to the northeastern USA are dependent on forest habitat, and a similar number use both forests and more open, disturbed habitats. Many of forest-dependent species are in the genera Andrena, Nomada, Osmia, Lasioglossum, and Bombus, and some are over 100 times as abundant in forests as compared to deforested areas. Forest-dependent species should be a conservation focus in the northeast because they were likely the dominant, original native bee fauna of this region, which prior to European colonization was extensively forested. However, forest bees are currently excluded from pollinator habitat restoration protocols, which focus on the wrong habitats (non-forest) and the wrong time of year (summer, when most forest-dependent species are no longer on the wing).
