The Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves is on a quest to catalog and understand the native bee population in the state. So far, through archival searches and extensive field surveys, they have identified hundreds of bee species native to the state as their work to fully understand these crucial pollinators continues.
While walking through a 200 acre grasslands preserve the office manages just south of Elizabethtown, Tara Littlefield, who coordinates rare plant and bug monitoring and inventories for the nature preserves office, explains that native bees play a key role in Kentucky’s environment. Native bees are often very different from the honey bees most people know about, which weren’t introduced to North America until the 17th century.
The nature preserve office’s multi-year project to figure out what native bees have lived in Kentucky — and how many still remain — is key to conserving both the bees themselves and the natural environments they pollinate.
Many of these native bees are specialists, pollinating a handful or even just one plant species, inextricably linking them.
“We got the list up to about 300 native bees over a couple of years, and now we know, just based on inventories of surrounding states, that we probably have another at least 100 native bees that we still haven't cataloged yet for Kentucky,” Littlefield said.
Most of the bees that Littlefield and her team are tracking aren't the kind kept in apiaries and stocking supermarket shelves. Some live in holes in the ground or in hollowed out flower stems. Many are solitary, without the complicated hive dynamics of social honey and bumble bees. Not all bees are even yellow — Kentucky’s native species span the color spectrum, including orange, blue and green bees.
Although their surveys are still ongoing and Littlefield said they still believe they have more bees to identify, she also said it's likely the biodiversity of bees in the state is declining.
“We're not getting 300 species in our surveys. We're getting … a couple of dozen at each site,” Littlefield said.
Caroline Kane, a native bee ecologist and coordinator for the Kentucky’s Natural Heritage inventory, said if they can better understand the bee populations in the state, they’ll be better able to protect them. As she collected bee bowls, little cups of soapy water used to trap the creatures, she explained there are numerous threats to native and honey bee populations in the state.
Since some native bees nest in small holes in the ground, Kane said excessive mowing and tilling can hurt their nesting ability too. And spraying yards for mosquitos will probably hurt bees as well.
“When all of the flowers are out, right after the bees have come out and they're ready to start collecting, but then everything is being sprayed, it'll really impact the bees,” Kane said.
While honey bee population declines have received widespread coverage, the decline of native and wild bees has been especially marked. According to a 2021 global study, 25% fewer bee species were found between 2006 and 2015 compared to before 1990. Wild bees pollinate both wild plant species that are integral to the environment and crops — up to a third of agricultural crops, according to Littlefield.
Without certain bee species, some of the plants that are unique to Kentucky could lose their primary pollinator. For example, the office found during a May survey that one of Kentucky’s unique orchid species, the “Kentucky lady’s slipper,” relies on a specific native bee for pollination and reproduction. They caught the pollination process, which relies on a native bee falling into the orchid’s pouch and then being covered in pollen as it struggled out of the flower.
“We got a video of this whole absurd scene where this bee gets tricked into falling into an orchid and then inadvertently pollinating it as it's escaping,” Littlefield said. “We're starting to use those cameras a lot more on specific plants and to study the different pollinators.”
Kane said this heightened understanding allows them to better manage state lands to best preserve the native species and help Kentuckians protect them too. She is working to create native seed mix recommendations to encourage and help different bugs, like butterflies and bees. She also recommends Kentuckians keep their grass longer and focus less on bluegrass for example, which is actually not native to North America.
“If you have a fallen tree that has a bunch of beetle holes in it, maybe just shove it against your fence and leave it there. It might not seem like the perfect yard, but it's actually helpful for bees,” Kane said. “Honestly, just changing what you define as a good lawn. Having a bunch of grass, like bluegrass, isn't the best for bees.”
These same surveys are happening with their partners across the state. John Abrams, the ecologist for Berea College’s Forest, participates in the bee bowl surveys and his own surveys too.
“I just walk around during blooming times of different flowers and just photograph every pollinator that comes to it,” Abrams said. “So I might spend an hour at one type of plant just photographing different insects that are coming to visit that flower.”
Abrams said wild bees in Kentucky have been “criminally understudied.” He said there could be so many different and rare plants and pollinators in the forest they don’t know about yet, and that information can help the college manage the environment.
“So that we can kind of balance the needs of the college, the forest, the needs of people, with the needs of the wildlife that occurs here,” Abrams said.
The funding for the survey comes from nonprofits like the Kentucky Natural Lands Trust and the Louisville Zoo. The zoo also plays a role in educating people about the array of native bees in the state and their roles as pollinators. Steve Taylor, the Louisville Zoo’s assistant director, said their funding allowed the state office to purchase the special macrocameras and funded microscopes for species analysis.
“You can see in front of you just a few of the pictures, absolutely gorgeous animals, very critical to survival for all of us,” Taylor said.
Taylor said at least a quarter of the zoo’s conservation budget funds goes to regional conservation efforts, preserving Kentucky wildlife and ecosystems.
“We want to help people learn how to live well with wildlife that's already around them,” Taylor said. “Wherever you go in the world, people tend to take the animals that they live with in their areas for granted.”
This story was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKU in Kentucky and NPR.
State government and politics reporting is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
