W. Native Bees In At Least As Much Trouble As Honeybees, 2026 Budget Closes Only Federal Wild Bee Research Center
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The Trump administration’s 2026 budget proposal calls for the defunding of the bee lab and other federally funded wildlife research efforts. Bracing for these cuts, priorities have shifted for the lab, which has collected and identified more than 1 million specimens of pollinators, hundreds of thousands of which are slotted away in its modest walls. Active field work is on pause. No new research projects have begun.
The lab’s potential closure comes at a tough time for bees. Droege studies native bees, the types of pollinators that only live in the wild, as opposed to honeybees, which are farmed and bred for profit. Entomologists stress that honeybees and native bees are different — sort of like farmed chickens and wild birds. But they can be exposed to the same threats, and there are signs that both are in trouble.
Native bees have experienced a steady population decline over decades and keepers of commercial honeybees reported one of their biggest colony losses ever this year. Commercial and native bees can fall victim to the same hazards, including pesticides, drought and environmental pollutants, experts said. Droege is one of the only people in the country who can distinguish most native bees from their thousands of relatives — research that helps track the insects and the plants and crops they maintain.
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Hollis Woodard, an associate professor focused on native bees at the University of California at Riverside, said the lab is “essentially irreplaceable.” She uses its data for her work researching native bees nearly every day. “If we lose this facility and we lose these people, the hit we’re going to take to tracking bees and trying to conserve them would be absolutely devastating,” Woodard said.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/06/22/bee-disappear-pollinator-federal-lab/
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