BEE-WARE – from STRI.org

Featured in nature documentaries including Bee Man, Panama Wild, Deep Jungle and Pollinators in Peril, STRI staff scientist David Roubik recently offered his home to experts

in time-lapse photography who created a new Blu-Ray DVD called Wings of Life, for Disney Nature. Narrated by Meryl Streep, the video captures hummingbirds, bees, bats and

butterflies transferring pollen from flower to flower, fertilizing plants so they produce fruit and seeds.   Threats to pollinators led the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to ask David to revise and update two of his books. In Pollination of Cultivated Plants in the Tropics

(FAO, 1995) David reviewed 1300 different animal-pollinated crops. “For most, no one knows which insects pollinate them, how often they flower and produce fruit, or whether they are self-pollinating or outcrossing, all pretty basic information for sustainable food production.”  David is also revising his 1989 book, Ecology and Natural History of Tropical Bees , to be distributed to FAO project participants in Brazil, Ghana, India, Kenya, Pakistan, Nepal and South Africa. He’ll spend his sabbatical year in Logan, Utah at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bee Lab.

For more information visit:  http://www.stri.si.edu/sites/strinews/PDFs/STRINews_Jul12_2013.pdf