What’s the buzz? Student research on cranberry pollinators takes second in competitions

What’s the buzz? Student research on cranberry pollinators takes second in competitions



March 7, 2025 – Two University of Rhode Island students were recently awarded second place by Arizona’s Entomological Society of America and the URI Undergraduate Symposium, respectively. Graduate student Ren Johnson, from Medina, Ohio, and senior Abigail Gill, from Lincoln, both in URI’s College of the Environment and Life Sciences, researched the life history of the cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) in Rhode Island. While they were at it, the pair discovered two bee species that have never been seen in the state.

Using three wild sites and one commercial site, the two examined which species of bees could be found on wild cranberry plants versus species likely to be found on farm raised plants.

Gill explained that she and Johnson visited the bogs regularly, covering about a half kilometer with each trip. Collecting and processing took five to six hours.
Gill (left) and Johnson donning beekeeper veils in the field to protect themselves from biting flies. (Photo courtesy Ren Johnson)

The collecting process held challenges for the two. According to Johnson, “doing any research in bogs and swamps is always very difficult—lots of boots filled with water and trudging through waist deep swamps. Finding a way to get to the bees was the most difficult part.”

The cranberry bloom time is mid-June to late July, which means being out in the heat and damp. It also means that the two had to battle other elements as well.

“There are lots of biting flies that are not deterred by mosquito repellent,” she said. “We had to wear beekeeper veils to keep them out of our eyes. Luckily, no one got stung, and there weren’t a lot of aggressive wasps or other stinging bees—just a lot of flies.”

Yet, by the time the research project was done, the team had acquired about a thousand bees to be processed.

Johnson says that while honeybees may first come to mind when thinking about pollinators, they may not be the best choice for commercial farms. Of the roughly 20,000 bee species in existence, some 90% are solitary, prohibiting being raised in a nest. The honeybee is not native to the United States and will compete with the natives, she adds.
Gill (left), joined by Johnson, presenting a poster on the team’s cranberry research at the Coastal & Environmental Fellows Symposium. The poster won second place in the competition.

“They’re an agricultural species and are not necessarily good for our environment,” she said. Typically, farmers will bring in hundreds of honeybees to pollinate their plants. Cranberries are difficult to pollinate. To cope with this, honeybees engage in “buzz pollination,” where the bees buzz their wings, shaking the flower like a maraca. Johnson says that bumble bees can perform this behavior, but honeybees are not very effective at it.

“People spend a lot of money bringing in more bees than they normally would because the honeybee pollination process is so inefficient,” Gill said. “We didn’t find a single honeybee on the wild bogs.”

What they did find were two species that hadn’t been spotted in Rhode Island before.

“We found an Eastern Cranberry bee (Melitta americana), which is a specialist bee on cranberry plants,” Gill said. “That’s not to say that the bee wasn’t in the state already, but we were the first people to go out and actually look at cranberry plants and find the insect on it.”

“There isn’t a consistent common name for the bee, but ‘cranberry blunt-horn bee’ or ‘blueberry blunt-horn bee’ have both been used. It has previously been seen in surrounding states, but not in Rhode Island before we found it this past summer,” said Johnson.

A clue that there was a healthy population of Melitta americana in the area was the presence of a kleptoparasite or “cuckoo bee,” named Nomada rodecki, which lays its eggs in the cranberry bees’ nest and eats the bees’ larva and pollen provisions. Nomada rodecki is a rare species and has also never been seen in Rhode Island, so it does not have a common name. The entire genus is called “nomad bees.”

“Many people think that the nomad bees are ‘mean’ or that it’s bad to see them, but they actually indicate healthy populations of Melitta americana,” said Johnson. “This discovery was just as exciting as the discovery of the cranberry blunt-horn bee.”

For Gill, the project was an exciting one. “I learned a lot in this position,” she said. “One of my takeaways is that I would love to keep working in pollination ecology. Plus, there’s a world of fascinating things to discover as long as you take the time to slow down and see them.”