John Muir wrote about the native bees present in California the 1800s:

WHEN California was wild, it was one sweet bee-garden throughout its entire length, north and south, and all the way across from the snowy Sierra to the ocean.

Wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of this virgin wilderness--through the redwood forests, along the banks of the rivers, along the bluffs and headlands fronting the sea, over valley and plain, park and grove, and deep, leafy glen, or far up the piny slopes of the mountains--throughout every belt and section of climate up to the timber line, bee-flowers bloomed in lavish abundance. Here they grew more or less apart in special sheets and patches of no great size, there in broad, flowing folds hundreds of miles in length--zones of polleny forests, zones of flowery chaparral, stream tangles of rubus and wild rose, sheets of golden compositæ, beds of violets, beds of mint, beds of bryanthus and clover, and so on, certain species blooming somewhere all the year round.

How long the various species of wild bees have lived in this honey-garden, nobody knows; probably ever since the main body of the present flora gained possession of the land, toward the close of the glacial period. The first brown honey-bees brought to California are said to have arrived in San Francisco in March, 1853. 

Besides the common honey-bee there are many other species here--fine mossy, burly fellows, who were nourished on the mountains thousands of sunny seasons before the advent of the domestic species. Among these are the bumblebees, mason-bees, carpenter-bees, and leaf-cutters. Butterflies, too, and moths of every size and pattern; some broad-winged like bats, flapping slowly, and sailing in easy curves; others like small, flying violets, shaking about loosely in short, crooked flights close to the flowers, feasting luxuriously night and day. Great numbers of deer also delight to dwell in the brushy portions of the bee-pastures.

But of late years plows and sheep have made sad havoc in these glorious pastures, destroying tens of thousands of the flowery acres like a fire, and banishing many species of the best honey-plants to rocky cliffs and fence-corners, while, on the other hand, cultivation thus far has given no adequate compensation, at least in kind; only acres of alfalfa for miles of the richest wild pasture, ornamental roses and honeysuckles around cottage doors for cascades of wild roses in the dells, and small, square orchards and orange-groves for broad mountain belts of chaparral.

¶

In 2016, Ruben Alarcón, PhD, associate professor of biology at California State University, Channel Islands, cited an estimated 2,000 species of bees in the state.

“At some point I decided if I wanted to understand [the evolution] of flowers I’d have to understand the pollinators,” says Alarcón. Now he wants to learn more about the types of native bees that call Ventura County home to learn their role in pollination. We really don’t know much about them compared to other species, he says.

Much of the research, including Alarcón’s, had been on the honey bee, but his lab is now exploring several varieties of plant-pollinator systems. These include the native bees of California and the rolling coastal sage- and scrub-covered hills surrounding CSUCI’s Camarillo campus.

“I’m really interested in how the plants are co-evolving with the pollinators, how the bees are selecting the different shapes and colors of the flowers.” What he’s found is that the bees are interacting with a wider range of plants than expected, he says, adding that the research is ongoing.

“Prior to the late ’90s and early 2000s,” says Alarcón, “much of our research on the relationships between flowers and their pollinators came from the ’40s to ’60s. For instance, scientists used to believe flowers’ traits could simply be used to predict their pollinators and if you went out to the field you were expecting to find a specific type of pollinator—such as a bee or hummingbird—on a certain flower.”

That’s just not the case, he says. “Pollinators are animals, and like animals they are opportunistic. Only 30 to 40% of plants have flower traits that can consistently be matched up with pollinators.”

After studying the nesting and foraging behavior of native bees, Alarcón calls them “the sustainable pollinators” and has found some interesting benefits that native bees add to the pollination equation.

“Honey bees are very orderly,” he says, surrounded by his hundreds of specimens neatly mounted, labeled and categorized in trays in his lab. “They will be drawn to a certain crop or orchard and go on down the row from one plant to the next. Native bees are much more erratic and faster. ... They actually make honey bees more efficient. If a native bee bumps into a honey bee in a field, the honey bee will change its course and fly across a few rows and increase cross-pollination.”

¶

I defer to John Chesnut, but it appears that native bees are still abundant in areas where their habitat has not been destroyed by urban sprawl, agribusiness, etc. I don't see anyone attributing a negative impact of the honey bee, especially when measured against the impact of human activity.

PLB

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