Researcher reports 76 bee species in Treasure Valley, warns of pollinator losses and crop risks

Dr. Ron Bittner, a researcher who has worked on native and managed bees for decades, told the Senate Agriculture Committee that a recent survey in the Treasure Valley identified at least 76 bee species and that pollinator loss poses a growing risk to specialty and seed crops.

"We collected somewhere between 14,000 bees total," Bittner said, describing a survey conducted with partners that used pan traps and other collection methods. He said the project began with a specialty-crop grant and that roughly 4,000 of the collected specimens had been labeled to date while additional identifications remained in progress.

Bittner said most of the bees collected are ground-nesting species — "90 percent of the bees we collected were ground nesters" — and noted that many nest in soil 10 to 12 inches deep. The survey included bees found in flax, turnip, carrot and onion seed fields and in noncrop sites; he said 700 bee species are recorded for Idaho and his team aimed to quantify local diversity in the Treasure Valley.

Bittner raised alarm about managed honeybee colonies, citing data he said showed large colony losses: "Starting in February, there's about a little over a million colonies ... 1,100,000 honeybee colonies have been lost," he said, and warned that shortages of healthy colonies will affect pollination services for crops such as tree fruits and crops that rely on hired pollination services.

He recommended several responses: expanding local research and identification capacity (an "Idaho bee atlas"), engaging citizen scientists and universities, creating bee-friendly corridors and plantings along roads and field edges, and securing funding beyond short-term grants to sustain monitoring and outreach. He said the economics of pollination for seed crops are not fully quantified and that more work is needed to determine the financial value of native and managed pollinators to Idaho agriculture.

Committee members asked about species identification, the role of wasps, how beekeepers rebuild colonies and the feasibility of human or robotic pollination; Bittner said manual or robotic pollination is not a practical widespread substitute for bees at present. He invited committee members to visit field sites and said the team plans to continue their work if additional resources become available.

"A third of everything we eat starts with a pollinator," Bittner told the committee, urging broader attention to pollinator conservation and monitoring.