Minnesota's incentives to save bumblebee from extinction

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Minnesota (United States), Feb 4 (Canadian-Media): An incentive of nearly a million dollar has been made by the state of Minnesota, United States for people to transform their lawns into bee-friendly wildflowers, clover and native grasses, media reports said.

Bumblebee. Image credit: Facebook

With a goal to provide food sources for pollinators of all kinds, and specifically to bumblebee, which is on the brink of extinction, the citizens are being urged by the the state to stop spraying herbicide, stop mowing so often so that their lawns re-wild into a more natural state.

Importance of bumblebees to the region is evident by the research of James Wolfin, a bee habitat researcher at University of Minnesota, which says that bumblebees vibrate at frequency that unlocks pollen not reached by other insects.

Pollinators have become more dependent on urban and suburban lawn flowers due to the loss of native prairies and forests across the country.

Wolfin's research is focused on bee lawns, which are grassy yards with small flowers such as Dutch white clover, creeping thyme, self heal, ground plum and dandelions.

Besides being excellent food source for bees, the flowers are both cheap to plant and easy to maintain.

“A pound of Dutch white clover is about $7 and it grows low enough that people wouldn’t even have to change the way they mow their lawn,” Wolfin

Around 55 of Minnesota’s  350 bee species depend on white clover alone, he notes.

“So just by not treating white clover like a weed and letting it grow in a yard provides a really powerful resource for nearly 20% of the bee species in the state,” Wolfin said.

The program is expected to begin in spring of 2020.

Citizens inhabiting bumblebee zones are eligible for grants up to $500, while people living in zones of secondary and tertiary importance to bees are eligible for $350 and $150 respectively.