Homeowners concerned about the decline of bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects need look no further than their own back yards, says ecologist Susannah Lerman at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the USDA Forest Service. In new research, she and colleagues suggest that homeowners can help support bee habitat in suburban yards, specifically their lawns, by changing lawn-mowing habits.
Homeowners concerned about the decline of bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects need look no further than their own back yards, says ecologist Susannah Lerman at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the USDA Forest Service. In new research, she and colleagues suggest that homeowners can help support bee habitat in suburban yards, specifically their lawns, by changing lawn-mowing habits.
The researchers found that taking a “lazy lawn mower” approach and mowing every two weeks rather than weekly can help encourage bee habitat in suburban lawns by allowing flowers to bloom. Longer intervals between mowing lets the lawn flowers bloom, which helps bees. She says, “Mowing less frequently is practical, economical and a timesaving alternative to replacing lawns or even planting pollinator gardens.”
Given the pervasiveness of lawns and other habitat loss for pollinators, the research findings provide immediate solutions for individual households to support bees in suburban settings, she adds. Lerman conducted the study with her colleagues Joan Milam at UMass Amherst, Alix Contosta at the University of New Hampshire and Christofer Bang at Arizona State University. Findings appear in the current issue of Biological Conservation.
For this study, supported by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability (SEES) program, Lerman and colleagues recruited 16 homeowners in Springfield, Massachusetts, and during 2013 and 2014, assigned each yard one of three mowing schedules so that yards were mowed either every week, every two weeks, or every three weeks, and then tested how the bees responded.
Read more at University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Image: Ecologist Susannah Lerman of UMass Amherst mowing a suburban lawn that was part of her study of bee populations and diversity. In exchange for participation, homeowners got free lawn mowing from the researchers, who cut roughly 350 miles of grass over the two-year study. (Credit: UMass Amherst)
