On April 27, Professor Richard Primack presented the results of a recent field survey of Newton’s pollinator community carried out by a team of Boston University undergraduate students under his direction. The Newton survey was designed to determine:
- what major plants were being used by European honeybees and native pollinators,
- whether honey bees were outcompeting native pollinators,
- if pollinator gardens are benefitting native pollinators, and
- if honeybees tended to visit cultivated plants and native pollinators tended to visit wild plants.
You can also view video of the earlier event by Professor Primack, “The Importance of Bees: Native Bees and Honey Bees.”
Richard Primack is Professor of Plant Ecology at Boston University and a lifelong Newton resident. His current research involves studying the effects of climate change on the flowering times of wildflowers and the leaf out times of trees. He is the author of university textbooks on Conservation Biology and the popular book Walden Warming: Climate Change Comes to Thoreau’s Woods.