As insects go, the honeybee has been the media's darling of late. This European species is the primary pollinator of commercial food crops in the United States, so it's not surprising that colony collapse disorder (CCD), the phenomenon devastating populations across the country, has been the subject of both the nightly news and scientific study. But bees native to North America also play an important role in pollination of wild and cultivated plants. These solitary and semisocial species, many of which nest in the ground, are harder to study. And there is no nationwide system to monitor them or to track the effects of CCD on plants. All this adds up to a laundry list of missing information about how our pollinators are doing.
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