Most bees are solitary and don't live in hives. Climate change risks them starving

When we think of bees, we often think of flowers. The more flowers the better, right? Well, not exactly. Like us, bees need to consume specific nutrients in suitable amounts and combinations. So, the mere presence of flowers doesn’t necessarily mean the bees are getting nutritionally adequate food. This matters because climate change is altering both the quantity and nutritional composition of pollen and nectar. At the same time, what nutrition the bees need is likely shifting, too. This creates rapidly moving goalposts – it’s increasingly difficult for bees to find and consume the right nutrients they need to reproduce, develop and survive. In our new paper published in Current Opinion in Insect Science, we argue these changes are unlikely to affect all bees equally. Currently, most of what we know about bee nutrition comes from highly social species such as honeybees or bumblebees. Yet most bees, including many native Australian species, are solitary or communal (group living but with no queens and workers). They might experience the nutritional landscape and nutritional stress in very different ways. Understanding these differences is crucial for predicting which bees are most vulnerable under climate change. Not all bees will encounter nutritional stress One...

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