From fuzzy, teddy bear-like pollinators to metallic green bees smaller than a fingernail, Utah’s mountains and deserts are buzzing with over a thousand native bee species. These tiny pollinators playing an outsized role in the state’s ecosystems.
“Native bees are absolutely critical. They support wild plant communities; they support entire ecosystems," said Colleen Meidt, Ph.D. candidate at Utah State University, studying native bees in Utah. "They also contribute substantially to agriculture.”
She said Utah is the place to be to study bees.
“Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument alone hosts at least 660 native species,” Meidt explained enthusiastically, “which encompasses about the same amount of species east of the Mississippi.”
Across the state there are at least 1,100 native bees. But Meidt said some have suspected it could be as high as 1,500.
Native bees, though less gregarious, are like the better-looking, mysterious cousin of the honeybee.
“Just about any color in the light spectrum native bees exist in. They come in a wide range of sizes and shapes,” Meidt said. “Some are really round and fuzzy, like teddy bears. Others look almost like ants.”
Native bees are woven into every ecosystem across Utah. Many species have evolved alongside native plants for thousands of years, because of this they have developed unique pollination strategies, including “buzz pollination,” where they rapidly vibrate their bodies to shake pollen loose from flowers — something honeybees can’t do.
“In a lot of ways, honeybees, they’re sort of this oddball,” Meidt, said, laughing. “They're social, nonnative, and mainly managed by people. Most native bees are actually solitary, meaning they're their own queens, and they nest in the ground or in hollow stems. They also evolved alongside a lot of native plants in the western U.S., so they have really specialized ecological relationships.”
While native bees differ from honeybees in many ways, they face similar challenges. “Loss of habitat, fragmentation,“ Meidt said, “pesticide exposure, invasive species, and just environmental instability.”
Habitat fragmentation in particular, is having a significant impact on bees everywhere.
“Landscape changes like replacing diverse vegetation with lawns and gravel can reduce flowers and nesting resources,” she explained.
The fight to preserve pollinators is an uphill battle, but Meidt said there are little things you can do to help native bees.
“Native flowering plants are one of the best things people can add to their gardens, things like penstemons, rabbit brush, blanket flower, milkweed, sunflowers, bee hotels are great,” she said. “The best ways to really target the conservation of least thriving native bees is to allow different habitats to exist in your backyard. Open patches of dirt are actually really, really incredible.
Creating habitat for native bees may seem like a small act, but its effects ripple far beyond a single backyard.
“One in every three bites relies on animal pollination,” Meidt said.
That means a third of the food we consume exists because pollinators move pollen from one flower to another, allowing plants to produce fruits, seeds, and vegetables. Even foods we do not immediately associate with pollination — like beef or dairy products — are connected through crops such as corn and alfalfa that livestock rely on for feed. In many ways, pollinators quietly support the foundation of both the ecosystems around us and the food systems we depend on every day.
From the mountains in the North to the deserts in the South, Utah is a native bee hotspot. It takes all of us to keep it that way.
