On an organic farm in central New Jersey, the plants are vibrating with bees. With a swift twist of her insect net, Rachael Winfree captures a wild bee smaller than an adult human's little fingernail, without disturbing so much as a petal of the plant it was pollinating. She is standing over a patch of weeds between rows of upstanding garlic and sprawling watermelon vines, in a region that's part of the Stony Brook Watershed. It is high summer, hot and sunny. Perfect weather for bees.
Unlike commercial bees, which are raised by humans, wild bees create their own living arrangements in the ground, or hollow trees, or construct a nest similar to that of a wasp. They range from the large bumble, Bombus impatiens, down to members of the Helictus genus, the largest family of small bees living and working in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Winfree, an entomologist at ...
