•              Links to our detailed bee information:
  

  Native Bees of Columbia County Farms & Floodplains (12 MB pdf document)

  List of Bees of Columbia County Farms and Floodplains (.1 MB pdf document)

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• [Martin Holdrege, a recently-graduated student of Hawthorne Valley School, has worked with us for several years. During the past couple of years he focused his efforts on studying native on-farm bees. The materials on this page are his summaries of that work. We hope to continue aspects of his work, so please get in touch with us if you’re interested in on-farm bees in the County. Martin himself is also a great source of information. Don’t hesitate to contact him directly if you have specific questions, his email is mcholdre “at” syr.edu.]
   
  
• IMPORTANCE OF NATIVE BEES IN COLUMBIA COUNTY, NEW YORK.
• All bee photos by Martin Holdrege
  

   
  

  
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• Bees are essential pollinators for many of our crops and vegetables. The number of domestic honey bee colonies has declined greatly during the past half century in the United States. Due to the diminished number of honey bees, more attention is being given to the largely unknown and overlooked wild native bees, such as bumble bees and sweat bees. Managing for native pollinators in a variety of ways may become an important aspect of sustainable agriculture. Researchers have found that on some diverse farms the majority of crop pollination is done by native bees and not honey bees. In New York State, there are approximately 423 species of native bees. For this reason we believe it is important to study wild bees in the context of farm environments. We studied native bees on five organic farms in Columbia County during 2007 and 2008. So far, we have found a total of 83 bee species on farms. 
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• In addition we have collected bees in floodplain forests (forests along streams that are usually rich in wildflowers in early spring) in Columbia County during 2008. There is a great diversity and abundance of bees in these early spring forests a. Many of these native bees are only active adults during the spring and therefore would not be found during the summer and may rely heavily on these floodplain habitats for survival; conversely spring plants need them for pollination. Additionally, some bee species were found both in floodplain forests and on farms, possibly indicating that floodplain forests may be beneficial for crop-pollinating bees. We found 56 bee species in floodplain forests, with a total of 114 bee species in Columbia County.
  
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• The materials available from the links at the top of the page provide lists of the local bees identified so far in Columbia County, and the report entitled “Native Bees on Columbia County Farms and Floodplains” (written for Martin's high school senior project) summarizes our methods and results - and provides more pictures!. Much thanks goes to Sam Droege for general encouragement and help in identification. 

Useful Internet Resources

 
The Bee Genera of Eastern Canada, by Laurence Packer, Julio A. Genaro and Cory S. Sheffield, has a nice summary of native bee identification and natural history.

Status of Pollinators in North America can be read on-line for free. This book was published in 2007 and therefore the information is up to date.

An ATTRA article discussing the use of native bees as pollinators. 

A NYS website that has info about bees, especially concerning bees found in NY.

The Discover Life website has excellent keys for bee ID in the eastern US. These are the keys we use for most of our ID work. There are also plenty of photographs of bees.

The Pollinator Partnership's website has a lot of info on native and Honey Bees. 

Farming for Bees, by the Xerces Society, is a wonderful article about native bee conservation, management and biology on farms. (This is a pdf document.)