Let me be blunt. I find this approach promoting native pollinators 
disingenuous. To cite sunflowers which are native American plants 
first cultivated in America 8,000 years ago, being effectively 
pollinated by native bees is fine... for sunflowers and other 
natives. But the fruits and produce that originated in Europe, home 
for millennia with apis m. are in fact adapted to the European bees. 
Perfectly matched, one might say, in the case of Almonds and Apples. 
This is why it's unwise to suggest (using sunflowers as an example) 
that natives can adapt to fill the gap?

Take red clover. Apis M. has a tongue too short to reach the nectar 
in the plant. It's not the bee the plant was made to fit. And to 
presume that some adaptation is all we need is like  insisting that 
Apis M would adapt (what? by tongue exercises?) to reach the nectar. 
It would starve first.

So when the Minnesota poster bowed to political pressure and showed a 
native bumblebee in every panel of the poster of "bees", they did a 
huge disservice overall.

As politically unpopular as it is, it's still a fact that nothing 
perfectly replaces apis m. And while our birdseed production 
(sunflowers) may not suffer, a lot of perhaps more critical food crops will.

At 12:00 AM 9/20/2010, Peter L Borst wrote:
>Actually, there is a groundswell of interest in native pollinators. 
>The old notion that only honey bees can do pollination economically 
>is being disproved:

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