To a human, a freshly manicured grass lawn is a pleasant place to have a picnic, or a nice feature in front of a home. The American Dream prominently features green grass alongside white picket fences as the goal of every working American. But for bees, a manicured lawn is a hellish wasteland filled with zero food or hope. So it’s not surprising that bees tend to avoid them.

New research published in the journal Biological Conservation reveals just how much bees hate freshly cut grass: Researchers found that mowing a lawn once every two weeks instead of every week raises the number of bees by 30 percent.

On a basic level, this makes sense. Cutting your grass less often leads to more flowers and weeds, which appeal more to the bees. But for some reason, letting the grass grow for even longer sees lower bee levels again. The researchers speculate that this is primarily due to the longer grass hiding or blocking the flowers for the bees.

So if you’re being plagued with bees, this research suggests that one easy way to solve the problem is to get off your butt and mow your lawn more often. Conversely, if you recognize that bees are a crucial part of the ecosystem and actually great little creatures, maybe cut your grass a little less frequently.

The other option you have is to get rid of your lawn entirely and replace it with flowers instead. Although the researchers didn’t study how much it would increase bee populations, you can bet the bees would thank you.

Source: Biological Conversation via Science

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