Research from NC State University shows that blueberries produce more seeds and larger berries if they are visited by a more diverse range of bee species, allowing farmers to harvest significantly more pounds of fruit per acre. In the study, which was published in the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers looked at blueberries in North Carolina because it is an economically important crop which relies on insect pollination. “We wanted to understand the functional role of diversity. And we found that there is a quantifiable benefit of having a lot of different types of bees pollinating a crop”, says Dr. Hannah Burrack, an associate professor of entomology at NC State. In the designated blueberry fields, the researchers categorised their bees into five distinct groups: honey bees, bumble bees, southeastern blueberry bees, carpenter bees and a grouping of similar local bees which they termed ‘small native bees’. When a bee from one of these groups visited a flower, it was marked. Some flowers were caged after pollination to prevent multiple bees from visiting the same flower. The team discovered that for each group above one, farmers saw an increase of $311 worth of yield per acre. For example if two bee groups visited a blueberry field, the increase would be $311 per acre. If three bee groups pollinated the field, the increase would be $622 per acre. For North Carolina blueberries as a whole, the researchers calculated the benefit of each bee group to be approximately $1.42 million worth of yield each year. The researchers think the benefit stems from differences in behavior between bee groups, in part depending on the weather. Southeastern blueberry bees also worked in bad weather, while honey bees only did their best during warm, sunny days. “We’ve shown that there is a real financial benefit associated with biodiversity,” Burrack said.