From isjd@ars-grin.gov Fri May 5 11:46:36 2000 Date: Wed, 3 May 2000 09:21:36 -0400 From: ARS News Service To: ARS News List Subject: Cranberry Bogs and Bees STORY LEAD: Cranberry Chores Don't Bog Down These Bees ___________________________________________ ARS News Service Agricultural Research Service, USDA Marcia Wood, (510) 559-6070, mwood@asrr.arsusda.gov May 3, 2000 ___________________________________________ Two species of native bees may prove ideal for helping America's domesticated honey bees with the daunting task of pollinating cranberry plants. An average acre of cranberry bog has about 20 million flowers. Each of these small, white blooms must be visited at least once by a pollinating insect in order for the flowers to form ripe, crimson berries. ARS scientists in Logan, Utah, and their colleagues from Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc., Lakeville, Mass., are scrutinizing the pollinating skills of a small, steely-blue bee known as Osmia atriventris. This insect belongs to a family of native bees that nest in holes in stems, branches, fenceposts, tree trunks and other aboveground cavities. And the scientists are experimenting with another promising native, a honey bee-sized leaf cutter called Megachile addenda. The leaf-cutting bee makes its shallow home in the sandy bottom of cranberry bogs. James H. Cane of the ARS Bee Biology and Systematics Laboratory at Logan, is leading the work as part of a cooperative research and development agreement between ARS and Ocean Spray, the country's largest cranberry-grower cooperative. Native bees are gentle and hardworking. They may help offset the loss of domesticated honey bees from attack by varroa or tracheal mites, small hive beetles, or microbes that cause devastating diseases such as foulbrood or chalkbrood. An article in the May issue of the ARS monthly journal, Agricultural Research, tells more about the Logan research team's studies of native bees as alternative pollinators. View it on the World Wide Web at: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/may00/buzz0500.htm ARS is USDA's chief research agency. ___________________________________________ Scientific contact: James H. Cane, ARS Bee Biology and Systematics Laboratory, 5310 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322; phone (435) 797-3879, fax (435 )797-0461, jcane@biology.usu.edu. ___________________________________________ This item is one of the news releases and story leads that ARS Information distributes on weekdays to fax and e-mail subscribers. You can also get the latest ARS news on the World Wide Web at www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/thelatest.htm. * Feedback and questions to ARS News Service via e-mail: isjd@ars-grin.gov. * ARS Information Staff, 5601 Sunnyside Ave., Room 1-2251, Beltsville MD 20705-5128, (301) 504- 1617, fax 504-1648.