Wild bee abundance and diversity in Wisconsin vegetable crops

Pollinator insects are in decline throughout the United States. As these species disappear so too may the billions of dollars’ worth of pollination services they provide annually. Previous research suggests that pollinator decline is being caused by interacting factors, including land use change and agrochemical exposure. These two factors were examined in the context of central Wisconsin, where processing vegetable agriculture is a dominant land use.  Although bees forage in vegetable fields where they may be exposed to agrochemicals, many of these crops are not pollinator-dependent and have thus been overlooked by previous pollinator research. Furthermore, the heterogeneity of crop types in this region has an unknown effect on pollinator habitat suitability. This study’s objective was to assess the temporal and spatial overlap of pollinator risk factors by examining the seasonal diversity, abundance, and distribution of bee species present in vegetable fields and comparing the results to seasonal changes in insecticide concentration in flower and leaf tissues of crops grown with a neonicotinoid seed coating.