Bee good on Word Bee Day - plant bee-autiful pollinator flowers and gardens

York University bee scientists are available to explain the best ways to help protect bees
and other pollinators facing increased threats

TORONTO, May 15, 2025 – As tariffs continue to threaten Canada’s food supply chain, it’s more important than ever to protect Ontario’s pollinators this World Bee Day, May 20. York University experts are available to discuss how people can help protect pollinator habitats.

The theme this year is Bee inspired by nature to nourish us all. According to the United Nations, pollinators contribute directly to food security and are needed to pollinate some 75 per cent of food crops worldwide.

In the Greater Toronto Area, there are more than 350 native bee species with about 1,000 across the country – many of which are wild bees, compared to managed honeybees - which depend on natural and diverse green areas, as well as floral gardens to sustain their populations.

“Wild native bees and other pollinators are often overlooked as honeybees often steal the spotlight, but native bees are incredibly important and are facing increasing threats from changing land use, pesticides and disease,” says York Research Chair in Behavioural Genetics Sandra Rehan, director of York’s Centre for Bee Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation (BEEC).

“There are many ways people and communities can help support our wild bees by planting native plants and flowers which bloom at different times during the season and being careful not to destroy wild bee habitats during spring clean-up,” says Rehan.

Every year, BEEc and the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (EUC) hosts a Garden Party for bees, where volunteers prune, weed, mulch and revitalize the University’s native plant garden, while being careful not to disrupt ground-nesting bee habits.

A way to celebrate and support bees and other pollinators, sponsored in part by World Wildlife Fund Canada, the Garden Party will take place on Tuesday, May 20, from 2 to 5 p.m. Media are invited. 

Examples of bee species that visit the EUC Native Plant Garden include Toronto's official bee – the green metallic sweat bee Agapostemon virescens – as well as tiny, smooth, black solitary bees that can be mistaken for flies or ants, and fuzzy bumblebees, whose queens are easily seen this time of year. 

“One of the main goals of the garden party is to get as many people involved and learning about native plantings, especially native plants to help our local native pollinators,” says Katherine Chau, BEEc coordinator and York Postdoctoral Fellow in the Rehan bee lab.

BEEc’s bee researchers can help better understand bees, the risks to their health, habitats, behaviour, genetics and diseases, and what people can do to help.    

Have some buzzworthy questions? Just ask the experts listed below. 

Sandra Rehan, BEEc as well as the Rehan lab, is an expert in wild bee genomics, behaviour and conservation and a professor in the Faculty of Science, can talk about: 

• Loss of plant-pollinator networks and how some plants will now bloom too soon or too late for bees that rely on them 

• Are the gut microbiomes of city bees missing key beneficial bacteria? 

• Biodiversity conservation and why it’s important 

• How maternal care of bee offspring has expanded the social life of bees 

• Population and behavioural genomics 

• Climate change, land use change and the effects on bees 

Gordon Fitch of the Fitch Lab, and an assistant professor in the Faculty of Science, can discuss:

• How environmental stressors, like urbanization, agriculture, and disease, shape interactions between bees and the plants they pollinate

• How disease affects wild bees; why pathogens are both an essential part of healthy ecosystems and a potential threat to wild bees.

• How bees cope with disease, and the “medicine” that plants can provide them

• How urbanization and agricultural land management impact the ability of wild bees to move about their environment.

• The role of parasites in shaping bee foraging preferences and the effects of the built environment on bee-parasite interactions

• Nectar robbery and its effect on pollination – when some pollinators, including certain bumblebees, carpenter bees and fruit bats, access nectar through a bite hole in a flower, which does not facilitate pollination as the pollinator avoids the pollen