Hot off the press: Bees feeling the burn

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Kit Prendergast

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Oct 9, 2025, 8:04:15 AMOct 9
to Bill Bateman, Campbell, Joshua - ARS
Dear Beeple,
I would like to share with you our review "Bees feeling the burn": a global review of the impact of fire on bees, published in Biological Reviews, with my coauthors Bill Bateman and Joshua Campbell.


We face a fiery future, with increases in fire frequency and severity under climate change, whilst today landscapes are experiencing altered historical fire regimes, including prescribed burning to reduce fuel loads, after a period of efforts to suppress fire, in many parts of the world. This is against the backdrop of documented and predicted declines in wild/native bees. This review, involving 148 studies, reveals that bees do not respond uniformly to fire, but instead responses vary by life-history traits (especially nesting substrate), taxonomic group, and aspects of the fire regime. This indicates a one-size-fits all approach to native bees and fire is ill-advised. Furthermore, whilst fire's impacts on bee food and nesting resources in turn influenced native bees, this was not always the case, cautioning against using proxies to gauge native bee community responses to fire. Many gaps in research remain, and there is a lack of research in landscapes that seldom experience fire.

Sincerely,
Kit

 

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Dr Kit Prendergast
Native bee scientist, conservation biologist and zoologist
University of Southern QLD Postdoctoral Researcher (Pollination Ecology)
Adjunct Curtin University and Forrest Scholar Alumni

Find native bee resources and more on my Patreon The Bee Babette: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheBeeBabette

YouTube channel The Bee Babette: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheBeeBabette 
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