New research shows that bees love cannabis plants, which could help restore their dwindling populations.
According to recent research, bees are major fans of hemp! 🐝 According to a study published in the journal Biomass and Bioenergy in 2019, planting more hemp could help to maintain bee populations which have become dangerously low in recent years.
Insecticides and other pesticides and herbicides have been linked to a dramatic decline in bee populations by multiple studies. But the recent legalisation of hemp in the United States and in many countries around the world seems to be having a very positive effect on multiple bee populations.
The latest research, conducted by Cornell University researchers found that bees are highly attracted to cannabis because of the plant’s plentiful amounts of pollen.
The findings are unusual, as cannabis doesn’t produce the sweet nectar found in typical floral varieties that attract insects. It would seem as though bees simply know that hemp is an excellent source of food.
The pollen produced by the male plant’s flowers (the female plant is the one loved by humans) is very attractive to the 16 bee subspecies of the study for reasons which are still unknown.
Also, as a late-season crop blooming during a time of floral deficiency, hemp may have an especially important potential to feed the bees through winter, enhance pollinator populations, and thereby help to sustain agroecosystem-wide pollination services for other crops in the landscape.
#hemprevolution
Sources:
- The Happy Broadcast (@the_happy_broadcast).
- O'Brien, C., Arathi, H., 2019. Bee diversity and abundance on flowers of industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa L.). Biomass and Bioenergy, 122, 331-335.
- Flicker, N. R., Poveda, K., Grab., H., 2020. The Bee Community of Cannabis sativa and Corresponding Effects of Landscape Composition. Environmental Entomology, 49, 197-202.