Avoid (abandon!) pesticides and grow a wide array of plants in order to support native pollinators.

"The European honeybee is the solo act of industrial agriculture. But in natural landscapes, there has always been a diversity of pollinators busily at work: bumblebees, moths, flies, beetles, butterflies, birds, and bats, just to name a few. There are 4,000 native bees in the U.S. alone, and at least 17,000 species known on the planet. And some of them make European honeybees look like slugabeds: Bumblebees will work when it's cool and cloudy and honeybees refuse to fly.

"Native bees also can buffer declines in agricultural production because of honeybee losses. 'They are really the unsung heroes,' said Claire Kremen, an ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley who has studied native pollinators and the services they provide — if conditions are right.





"Native pollinators need food and habitat to survive. In her research, Kremen found that, ironically, monocultures of single crops that most need the help of native pollinators are least likely to support them.

"In recognition of the pollinator problem, Congress in the 2008 farm bill included cost sharing to encourage farmers to plant some of their land just for bugs, to diversify the nation's pollinator portfolio with more native bees and other beneficial insects."