Something is happening in the sprawling fields of the American South that doesn’t quite add up on paper. Despite the fact that cotton, peanuts, and soybeans are perfectly capable of producing a harvest without any help from insects, bees are flocking to these crops in massive numbers.
Now, Isaac Esquivel, an assistant professor at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, is launching a new investigation to figure out why these pollinators are so loyal to fields that technically don’t need them.
Supported by a nearly $300,000 grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), the study aims to track bee behavior across these staple Southeast landscapes. The mystery isn’t just about the visits; it’s about the fact that bees are even nesting in these fields, persisting through routine farm work and standard pest treatments…