The plight of honey bees has received nationwide attention for the past decade, as conventional agricultural practices, a changing climate and habitat loss have decimated their numbers. Yet the spotlight has largely passed over thousands of native bee species, whose populations have also declined.
For Nina Sokolov, a Ph.D. candidate from the University of California, Berkeley, the survival of native bees, which contribute an estimated $3 million a year in pollination services for crop production…