Bees love the lawns of lazy homeowners

As prolific pollinators, bees area unit crucial to a healthy system. however their numbers area unit declining round the world attributable to agriculture and concrete development. Now, researchers have discovered that lazy lawnmowers—people WHO mow their lawns once each two weeks—have a lot of bees than folks that mow their lawns each single week.

To find out that yards yielded “peak bee,” researchers recruited sixteen lucky community owners in Springfield, Massachusetts. The researchers mowed their lawns each week—or once each two or three weeks—for 2 summers. The researchers used insect nets and pan entices—plastic cups full of cleaner water and placed close to field flowers—to trap bees. The team conjointly collected knowledge on the quantity and kinds of field flowers that up between mowing days.

Lawns cut each two weeks supported half-hour a lot of bees than the opposite lawns, the team reports this month in Biological Conservation. The 2-week lawns had a lot of flowers than the 1-week lawns, explaining the upper variety of bees. however researchers suspect that the 3-week lawns, that had even a lot of flowers, were less engaging, as a result of the taller grass may need created it harder for the bees to succeed in the flowers.