If you grow vegetables, berry bushes or fruit trees (or all of the above) then you already understand the importance of successful pollination. Flowers need to be pollinated in order to successfully ...

Editor's Note: This story was originally published in 2019. When Dyan and Mark Eisenberger decided to make their garden in Columbia more pollinator-friendly, they started by removing nonnative plants.

Mason bees hibernate in cocoons through the winter and emerge in early spring, pollinating up to 95% of fruit tree and flower blooms. They are easy to host, require no beekeeping skills, and are ideal ...

TACOMA — This spring you might want to welcome some apartment dwellers into your back yard. They’re peaceful (especially the males), they keep to themselves and don’t require much work from you. Oh, ...

Orchard mason bees (Osmia lingeria) are fun to watch and easy to raise at home. Larger than a housefly and black in color, they are not known for stinging. These valuable insects help pollinate our ...

Backyard beekeeping has grown in popularity in recent years. A big part of the reason is the concern by many people for the ongoing and mysterious loss of honeybees each year. Although we still don’t ...

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Look closely at an apple tree in bloom, and you’ll see busy little bugs, industriously moving from flower to flower. The tiny bees play a big role in ...

Mason bees do not have the classic yellow and black stripes of the honeybee, or the plump fuzziness of the bumblebee. Rather, they are a metallic blue-green — like a house fly. (In fact, they are ...

Expand your understanding of food systems as a Civil Eats member. Enjoy unlimited access to our groundbreaking reporting, engage with experts, and connect with a community of changemakers. We talked ...

The invasive Houdini fly (Cacoxenus indagator), a kleptoparasitic insect about the size of a fruit fly, is spreading across North America and significantly impacting mason bee populations. Over her ...