A number of people in this thread are responding regarding their honey bee population, which I think is very important for agriculture. However, I think the mo

A number of people in this thread are responding regarding their honey bee population, which I think is very important for agriculture. However, I think the more insidious issue is the decline of native bee populations. From the article: > Nor are the 4,000 native bee species in North America doing any better: Nearly 1 in 4 of them is at increasing risk of extinction.3 I think a driving factor of this is paving over large swaths of land, farming, and individuals planting non-native plants. The native habitats for these native bees is disappearing and thus it shouldn't be a surprise that the bees are disappearing as well. My wife and I have been planting hundreds of native plants in our garden over the last few years and there is an incredible difference in the number of native bees that visit our yard now, sometimes it's dozens at a time. We definitely never saw such activity with a standard lawn and non-native shrubs.