a Douglas snip... 'So, I think the most pressing research question is not "Which is better, urban or agricultural?" but rather "What specific characteristics of urban and agricultural landscapes are favorable for bees, and how can we manage both types of landscapes to optimize these characteristics?"'

First a bit off subject but a question I have for Mr Oliver and Mr Borst is in regards to 'research' which it appears Douglas also does???  I have noted a large difference in how 'reviewing prior work' is now done and how it was done say 30 years ago.  3 decades ago you went to the college library 'stacks', wade thru reams of useless material in journals and books and on a rare occasion read something that was pertinent to the question you where thinking of asking.  Sometimes such effort even told you the question had already been asked.  The process took lots of time and you had to read a lot of written material.  Now it seems in the age of computers and automatic search algorithms one just punches in a few key words and presto you search is done.  But this 'automatic search process' does seem to ignore any information prior to the time when information was on paper and not digitized.  A lot of information simply seem to fall off the edge of the world!

to Douglas's question...  in a way the question was asked some 40 years ago and don't go asking me for the citation since I long ago forgot where that particular issue of 'the journal' is even be stored.  to cut to the chase somewhat a survey was done of apiary sites by location and honey production (I seem to recall this 'survey' was done somewhere in the mid west) and there was a positive correlation between the proximity to a riparian strip of land and per hive honey production.  At the time this made some sense to me since approximation to streams or rivers also places hives closest to the most fertile land and of course water.  This landscape in many places also tends to be 'broken up' into a field and forest type landscape..... which would also suggest the nectar and pollen sources are also somewhat diverse.        

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