Location: Pollinator Health in Southern Crop Ecosystems Research
Project Number: 6066-30500-004-000-D
Project Type: In-House Appropriated
Start Date: May 2, 2025
End Date: May 1, 2030
Objective:
Objective 1: Improve habitat to reduce the impact of stressors, including pesticides, pests, and pathogens on pollinators in ways that are beneficial to both beekeepers and farmers.
Sub-objective 1A: Determine the interactive effects pesticide stressors and nutrition on bee health (Lau/Seshadri).
Sub-objective 1B: Use a systemic approach to detect pesticide levels in habitat, honey bee hives, and adult bees (Zhang/Amiri/Zhu).
Sub-objective 1C: Evaluating the effects of spray products amended with adjuvants on drift reduction efficiency under laboratory and field conditions. (Kannan/Zhu/Zhang).
Objective 2: Determine ways to improve the health of both managed honey bees as well as native bees that provide pollination services for farmers and other land managers while ensuring that bee pollinators have access to critical resources in different environmental conditions.
Sub-objective 2A: To assess the nutritional quality of pollen and nectar from particular crop and non-crop plants in the Southern U.S (Lau/Williams/Abbate).
Sub-objective 2B: Identify pollinator interactions with non-native flowering plants (Lau/Abbate).
Objective 3: Develop a holistic ecosystem level approach to understanding bee and plant biodiversity in large scale agriculture, supporting bee populations while simultaneously improving crop production and safeguarding the environment.
Sub-objective 3A: Identify soil amendments that improve bee-friendly habitat in the Southeastern agroecosystem (Abbate/Williams/Seshadri).
Sub-objective 3B: Identify the community of non-Apis bees visiting Mississippi specialty and grain crops (Parys/Seshadri).
Sub-objective 3C: Determine the impact of land use and abiotic/weather parameters on abundance and diversity of non-Apis bees in Mississippi (Parys/Kannan).
Approach:
Pollinators including, managed honey bees and unmanaged native bees, are critical for sustaining agriculture in the United States, as they ensure economically viable fruit, vegetable and nut crop production. However, bee populations in agricultural environments are at risk, as these landscapes depend on high pesticide inputs and regular pest management, so that farmers can maximize crop yield. Combined with other known stressors, such as pests, pathogens, and poor nutrition, exposure to pesticides creates a suboptimal ecosystem for sustaining healthy bee populations. Declining bee health contributes to reduced pollination services for crops, resulting in declining crop yields, and compromised ecosystem health. The need for bee pollinators in agricultural ecosystems and the risks these environments present highlight the need for practical solutions to improve pollinator health in agroecosystems.
This project plan aims to 1) improve habitat to reduce the impact of stressors, including pesticides, pests, and pathogens on pollinators in ways that are beneficial to both beekeepers and farmers, 2) determine ways to improve the health of both managed honey bees as well as native bees that provide pollination services for farmers and other land managers while ensuring that bee pollinators have access to critical resources in a changing climate, and 3) develop a holistic ecosystem level approach to understanding bee and plant biodiversity in large scale agriculture, supporting bee populations while simultaneously improving crop production and safeguarding the environment. Together, these research objectives will address pollinator losses by improving bee nutrition and fitness, reducing bee risk to stressors found in agricultural landscapes, and supporting overall ecosystem health for non-Apis bees.
Thorough studies will be conducted over the next five years on bees in large intensive row-crop agroecosystems in the southeast. Laboratory studies will identify ways to reduce chemical risk to bees and determine dietary nutrients that support bee health. Field studies will incorporate the results from the lab towards practical applications to sustain healthy honey bees. These studies include toxicological and foraging preference field surveys, colony-level dietary supplementation experiments to improve bee health, pesticide drift reduction assays, and landscape and ecosystem level studies on bee and vegetation biodiversity. The unit will employ state-of-the-art technologies on chemistry, toxicology, nutritional ecology, landscape ecology, taxonomy, big data, and modelling. Strategies to reduce pollinator losses will be devised by studying improved bee nutrition, specifically testing key nutrients found in pollen that can reduce bee susceptibility to stressors. Refining pesticide chemical formulations and managing pesticide drift, will reduce pollinator exposure to pesticide stressors. Finally, supporting native bee populations by looking at bee-friendly habitat and land use enables a holistic approach towards improving overall ecosystem health, including the landscape and pollinators, ultimately improving crop production and the natural environment.
