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Bees Have a Goldilocks Lawn Mow¹ Schedule

Add up every golf course, athletic² field, industrial park, and yard in the U.S. and you have an area nearly the size of Florida. Upon first glance, all that lawn might seem a biological wasteland—a monoculture of grass.

把美国的高尔夫球场、运动场、工业园和院子都加起来，面积几乎和佛罗里达州一样大。乍看之下，所有草坪都可能看起来像一片生物荒地——也就是一片草地。

But while natural areas in the U.S. continue to decrease thanks to urbanization, urban green spaces—including lawns—could become more important reservoirs of biodiversity.

但是，由于城市化，美国的自然区域在不断减少，但城市绿地——包括草坪——可能成为更保护生物多样性更为重要的区域。

"What happens if we mow our lawns less? Do we get more lawn flowers? And if we get more lawn flowers, can we get more bees?"U.S. Forest Service ecologist Susannah B. Lerman.

“如果我们把草坪修剪得更少，会发生什么事情呢?我们会得到更多的草坪花朵吗?如果我们得到更多的草坪花朵，那么可以引来更多的蜜蜂吗?”美国林务局生态学家Susannah B. Lerman说道。

She and her colleagues devised an experiment to see if front lawns could in theory provide decent habitat for bees – and if so, how to do it. So they recruited 16 homeowners from a Massachusetts suburb and monitored for flowers and bees throughout the summer for two years.

她和同事们设计了一个实验以检测草坪是否真的可以按照理论表述的一样为蜜蜂提供体面的栖息地——如果是的话，又将如何去做。因此，他们从马萨诸塞州郊区招募了16名房主，并在整个夏天监测了两年的花卉和蜜蜂互动的情况。

Each of the homeowners agreed not to use any kind of pesticide³ or herbicide. And none had cultivated any sort of pollinator or vegetable garden that could skew the results. Some of the lawns were mowed⁴ weekly, some every other week, and others were mowed every three weeks.

每个房主同意，不使用任何种类的农药或除草剂。而且，所有房主均未培育出任何可能影响结果的传粉昆虫或蔬菜。一些草坪每周修剪一次，有些每两周修剪一次，另外一些草坪则每三周修剪一次。

"When we mowed the lawns less, we got more flowers, roughly two and a half times more. But it was those that we mowed every two weeks that had the most bees."

“当我们修剪草坪时，就会得到了更多的花朵，数量大约增加了两倍半，但是我们每隔两周修剪草坪引来的蜜蜂数量最多。”

No surprise, flowers were most abundant on the lawns mowed least often. But why do bees like a bit more frequent mowing⁵? Lerman thinks that's because most of the bees she found were tiny native sweat bees, roughly the size of a grain of rice. CRItters that small could find it difficult to navigate⁶ through the taller grasses.

花朵在修剪次数最少的草坪上最为丰富。但为什么蜜蜂喜欢修剪频率较高的草坪呢?Lerman认为，这是因为她发现的大部分蜜蜂，都是体型较小的本地蜜蜂，大约有一粒米的大小。这可能会导致他们很难找到更高的草。

In all the researchers found 111 types of bees over the course of the study. That represents a quarter of all bee species known to occur in Massachusetts.

在研究过程中，研究人员发现了111种蜜蜂。这是马萨诸塞州已知的所有蜜蜂品种的四分之一。

"When you get down on your hands and knees, there's a lot going on in these lawns."

“当你俯身观察时，就知道这些草坪上发生了很多事情。”

So not only do lawns hold more biodiversity than it might seem, but it turns out that one way to manage them for wildlife is to be lazy—but not too lazy.

因此，不仅草坪拥有比更多的生物多样性，而且事实也证明，管理野生动物的方法之一是不作为——但不是太懒惰。

"A lot of people have been telling me that they feel vindicated⁷ now. That they have a realize to tell their neighbors why they're not mowing, it's for the bees…By mowing your lawns every two weeks or so, you're letting these flowers grow and bloom and they seem to be having a positive impact for bees."

“很多人都告诉我，现在他们觉得自己有逆反心理，他们有意识地告诉自己的邻居，为什么不割草，是因为蜜蜂......每隔两周左右割一次草，就会让这些花朵能够正常开花，这也似乎对蜜蜂有积极的影响。