Can the green carpenter bee of Australia be saved?

The impact of the recent Australian wildfires has been devastating and terrifying. The scale is almost incomprehensible. The megafire burning across the country's most populous states of New South Wales and Victoria has engulfed approximately 2,300 square miles. And it's just one of 135 bushfires currently burning in the southeast of Australia that have claimed over two dozen human lives, ruined nearly 3,000 homes, and possibly killed up to an estimated one billion animals. These wildfires pose a very real danger to the country's immensely diverse insect populations. One species of native bee might now be teetering on the brink of extinction as a result.

The green carpenter bee (Xylocopa aerata) is the largest native bee in southern Australia, measuring almost an inch long (2 cm). It's generally a solitary bee with very specialized nesting habits: dead Banksia trunks and dead grass tree stalks. The green carpenter bee is a buzz pollinator, and many native plants, such as guinea-flowers, velvet bushes, fringe, chocolate and flax lilies depend completely on buzz pollination for reproduction.

“They’re important pollinators because they are quite large bees, therefore they need to visit lots of different plants to collect the pollen," said Dr. Remko Leijs, a bee researcher at the South Australian Museum, in a 2018 interview with the Adelaide Review. "They go to lots of different species of flowers.”

Unfortunately, land clearing and previous large bushfires over the past century have already caused local extinction of the green carpenter bee throughout the country. While it was once widely distributed from northern New South Wales to Kangaroo Island, the bee is now found only on the western part of Kangaroo Island and on the eastern flanks of the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales.

Leijs and Dr. Katja Hogendoorn, a research associate at the University of Adelaide, have been leading a dedicated effort to protect and rehabilitate the green carpenter bee population. Because Banksia doesn't survive fire and requires over 30 years to regrow and get to the right conditions for green carpenter bees to use the trunks as a home, Leijs, Hogendoorn and colleagues have been installing artificial nesting stalks on Kangaroo Island. Every year, they check the nests several times, investigate the contents in the winter using x-ray, provide more stalks and remove the old ones.

At the time of the current wildfires, the team had established 440 stalks at twelve different locations on the island; 160 of these stalks were occupied with nests containing mature brood. But now almost all of those areas have burned. There may still be nests dotted around the eastern part of the island, but they're likely far fewer in number – and the fires aren't out yet.

"It is difficult to assess the situation, because there is no access to the burnt sites," says Hogendoorn by email. "But the species is likely to be in dire straits, as all of its habitat has now either burnt or is threatened by fire, and this is unlikely to change in the coming decade."

The bee is also found around Sydney on the east coast of NSW, but 80 percent of that habitat has been destroyed by fire as well, according to Leijs. "These fires are still burning and let's hope there will be suitable habitat left when the fires are out," he says by email. "So our plan are (sic) to broaden our efforts also to the Sydney area."

One hopeful fact is that grass trees flower profusely after fire – as long as the fire doesn't burn too hot. The grass tree stalks become available as nesting sites after a couple years and remain useable for up to six years before falling down. But it's the artificial stalks being provided by Leijs, Hogendoorn and their colleagues that will guarantee consistent places for the green carpenter bee to nest as the landscape recovers.

"As long as the bee is still out there, we will keep going with our conservation effort," says Dr. Hogendoorn.

You can support the efforts to protect Australia's native bees. Donations can be made to the green carpenter bee conservation project. Dr. Leijs says donations will make it possible for the team to assess the presence of bees in the areas that remain unburned and to establish more artificial nesting stalks in and around areas that have burned. You can select either "Green Carpenter Bee" or "General native bee research" from the Designation drop-down menu to direct your support.

Conservation

Urgent new ‘roadmap to recovery’ could reverse insect apocalypse

(The Guardian) The call to action by more than 70 scientists from across the planet advocates immediate “no-regret” actions on human stress factors to insects which include habitat loss and fragmentation, the climate crisis, pollution, over-harvesting and invasive species. The paper comes amid repeated warnings about the threat of human-driven insect extinction causing a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, with more than 40 percent of insect species declining and a third endangered.

Seeking the building blocks of pollinator conservation

(Great Lakes Echo) Great Lakes researchers are seeking fundamental knowledge about pollinators like bumble bees and butterflies, hoping to reverse their decline. “Part of this project is to create a baseline for future comparison. We’ve been resampling places where pollinators were sampled 50 years or 100 years ago and trying to see how the populations have changed.”

Effortless Environmentalism: Easy ways to live more gently on the earth – emphasis on ‘easy’

(New York Times) Reframe your relationship with bugs. Cultivate a glorious mess. Take out your earbuds. Put your money where your values are. Vote.

Economics

‘Like sending bees to war’: the deadly truth behind your almond-milk obsession

(The Guardian) Commercial honey bees are considered livestock by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But no other class of livestock comes close to the scorched-earth circumstances that these bees face in the toxic chemical soup of California’s Central Valley, fertilizing almonds one blossom at a time. “The high mortality rate creates a sad business model for beekeepers. It’s like sending the bees to war. Many don’t come back.”

Policy/Law

EU Commission bans Bayer pesticide linked to harming bees

(Reuters) The European Commission decided not to renew approval for thiacloprid. The Commission based its assessment on findings of the European Food Safety Agency published in January last year. The findings highlighted concerns about the active substance being toxic for humans and present in too great a concentration in ground water. The pesticide also harms bees and bumblebees, weakening their immune systems and impairing their reproduction, the findings said.

Science

Dr. Hollis Woodard announces creation of national native bee monitoring network

(Twitter, @bee_witcher) “Exciting news: this spring, we are forming a US National Native Bee Monitoring Network – the goal of which is to coordinate & support wild native bee monitoring projects across the country… Collaborators Sam Droege, Dan Cariveau, Shalene Jha, Bryan Danforth, Tam Smith, Jamie Strange, Becky Irwin, Sarina Jepsen, Rufus Isaacs, David Inouye, Neal Williams – and we hope to work with everyone in the bee monitoring community!”

Water lily genome expands picture of the early evolution of flowering plants

(Penn State) The newly reported genome sequence of a water lily sheds light on the early evolution of angiosperms. Water lilies have been important to scientists because of their position near the base of the evolutionary tree of all flowering plants. Scientists are interested in the water lily genome to help understand how traits like big showy colorful flowers and floral scents, both of which serve to attract pollinators, have evolved.

Tall hemp attracts more bees

(Boulder Weekly) The Cornell team collected bees at 11 hemp farms in central New York in the summer of 2018. Their findings show that hemp plants at least 2 meters tall attract nearly 17 times the number of bee visits compared to short plants. The number and species of bees increased proportionally with plant height, with 16 different bee varieties making cannabis pit stops.

Technology

New smartphone technology aimed at protecting bees during local almond bloom

(The Bakersfield Californian) BeeWhere, a smartphone app introduced statewide in California last fall, lets beekeepers register their colonies’ location so that companies applying pesticides and fungicides know not to spray or fumigate nearby during daytime hours when honey bees tend to be outside their hives. According to California state law, chemicals deemed to be a threat to honey bees may not be applied within one mile of a bee colony.

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