Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

Assessing the attractiveness of native wildflower species to bees (Hymenoptera: Anthophila) in the southeastern United States

Metadata Updated: December 2, 2025

Pesticide use, disease, climate change, and habitat loss associated with agricultural intensification and urbanization have contributed to the decline of numerous insect groups. Recent government incentives have recognized the importance of supplementary wildflower plantings to support native bee populations, yet little information exists on the attractiveness of recommended plant species to bees. We evaluated the bee attractiveness of 18 native wildflower species belonging to 6 families (Apiaceae, Apocynaceae, Asteraceae, Fabaceae, Lamiaceae, and Verbenaceae) commonly recommended by the U.S. Department of Agriculture – Natural Resource Conservation Service (USDA-NRCS) to land managers in the southeastern United States. To accomplish this, we planted the 18 wildflower species in separate 1 m2 plots arranged in a randomized block design with four replicates in Auburn, Alabama, USA. We conducted floral counts and timed sweep netting events to assess each species’ attractiveness to bees from May-November 2019. We also evaluated the floral preferences of seven bee taxa (Apis mellifera, Halictus poeyi/ligatus, Bombus griseocollis, Bombus impatiens, Lasioglossum spp., Megachile spp., and Xylocopa virginica) to the planted wildflower species. We found that Asclepias tuberosa, Gaillardia pulchella, and Verbena hastata attracted the greatest abundance, richness, and diversity of native bees compared to the other wildflower species. While several wildflower species attracted low abundance, richness, and diversity of native bees, they are still ecologically important for attracting uncommon or specialist bee species. Each bee taxa were attracted to a particular combination of planted wildflower species; collectively, Asclepias tuberosa, Gaillardia pulchella, and Verbena hastata attracted 89% of all be taxa in the study, which exemplifies the importance of including them in a wildflower mixture to attract native bees. Our results highlight that each species of native wildflower varies in the abundance, richness, and diversity of native bees they attract; this could be considered in the decision-making of landowners and land managers to promote wildflower plantings to reflect their needs.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: Creative Commons Attribution

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date November 2, 2024
Metadata Updated Date December 2, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from USDA JSON

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date November 2, 2024
Metadata Updated Date December 2, 2025
Publisher Agricultural Research Service
Maintainer
Identifier 10.15482/USDA.ADC/25102976.v2
Data Last Modified 2025-11-22
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 005:18
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 7f0c012a-4b8c-4b9c-882f-83ac64185e16
Harvest Source Id d3fafa34-0cb9-48f1-ab1d-5b5fdc783806
Harvest Source Title USDA JSON
License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Old Spatial {"type": "Point", "coordinates": -85.3, 32.41}
Program Code 005:040
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash c1578e13dbbe8e37358276f4c6c2a05607f86d03b1df19495e81f9ff60a99040
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Point", "coordinates": -85.3, 32.41}
Temporal 2019-05-01/2019-11-30

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.