Abstract:
The economic value of bees and other pollinators in the United States, as a whole, is estimated to be approximately $3 billion per year. Bees in urban matrixes provide crucial pollination services to urban community farms and gardens. The decline of notable bee species (A. mellifera, B. affinis, B. terrnarius) has prompted the expansive initiative of determining conservation status of all bee species. Urban areas have long been under-sampled, especially for bees, which surprisingly sometimes can provide refuge for insects. urban bee communities, and the flora they use for brood provisioning and nutrition, is not well understood. Here, we present several notable bee species and floral interactions observed in Bridgeport, Connecticut across multiple flight seasons.
