Student Research: "How Many Honey Bee Hives is Crow's Nest Worth?"

Last year's senior seminar in ecology at Bryn Mawr College had one other paper that I haven't written about here yet. This is a long-term project conducted by Rosemary Malfi, who also used other Natural Lands Trust preserves as study sites. Her paper is subtitled One case of native bee pollination as an ecosystem service.

She returned to the meadow above the Chief's Grove many times to do plant and bee surveys and then used other research to develop a formula for the value in pollination services for "our" bees.

She cites that 30% of the U.S. diet consists of bee-pollinated food. Native bees are effective crop pollinators—and their services are free. But there needs to be adequate habitat for nesting and foraging in the area. Crow's Nest offers a native pollinator resource pool for surrounding agricultural lands; the value varies by crop and distance from the preserve. The value is computed in terms of the startup and maintenance costs of hives of honeybees performing the same duties.

Rosemary and the other students have graduated and it is exciting to think about what contributions their future research will yield. We thank them and their advisor Patty Zaradic for adding to what we know about Crow's Nest.