New research revealed that foreign honey bees often account for more than 90 percent of pollinators observed visiting flowers in San Diego, considered a global biodiversity hotspot. The non-native bees have established robust feral populations and currently make up 75 percent of the region’s observed pollinators. Their monopoly over the most abundantly blooming plant species may strongly affect the ecology and evolution of species that are foundational to the stability of the region’s plant-pollinator interactions.
