5-16 IAN Bee Timing

 Pollinators are confused and so am I.  I had a recent discussion with Douglas Muchoney, Senior scientist for forest, carbon and climate at USGS. This guy is pretty smart and a very seasoned scientist. We were talking about warming of the forests throughout the world due to climate change and then all of a sudden he brought up bees: “ Another important point about the climate change is that it brings about changes in the growing season. We are seeing it here. We just saw the cherry blossoms down on the Mall coming in 3 weeks early. They had  effects on tourism but this has an effect on pollinators. I was living in France at the world meteorological organization for 5 years and I remember it was the Association of beekeepers who asked the Association of Arborists not to do their normal February pruning that they do because there would be nothing left for the bees. We are seeing massive changes occurring in the growing season and what you have is a mixup in timing between when they are flowering and when the pollinators usually emerge. we don’t know how adaptable the pollinators  will be.”