The arrival of the Anthropocene has brought with it considerable challenges for wild bees. In particular, the spread of industrial agriculture has profoundly altered the landscape across large portions of the globe, often reducing the availability and diversity of floral resources.
The most widely grown crops (cereals such as wheat, rice, and corn, comprising 79% of global crop area) are wind-pollinated, and hence provide minimal resources for pollinators.
When grown in large monocultures, with extensive herbicide use to eliminate most weeds, the farmed landscape can be almost devoid of flowers.
If all this were not enough, climate change is likely to add further to the challenge of efficient foraging in bees.
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Being large and furry, bumble bees are adapted to cool, temperate climates and can overheat in warm weather, becoming unable to forage. In specialist bees that have a narrow range of food plants, the timing of emergence of bees and flowering may become uncoupled, and their offspring may lack the ability to digest and develop on alternative pollen sources.
Rising CO2 concentrations can reduce the protein content of pollen, while extreme climatic events such as heat waves, fires, and droughts are likely to alter the ability of plants to produce floral resources, and such effects will undoubtedly get worse in coming decades.
