By Emily Conover of the Journal Sentinel

Cranberries are blooming this month in Wisconsin — each delicate blossom awaiting a visit from a bee to pollinate it before the plants can produce their famously tart, red berries.

To ensure the flowers are pollinated, cranberry farmers need bees — lots of bees. Farmers typically hire beekeepers to bring hives of honeybees to pollinate the flowers. But what if there were a better way?

That’s what scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison want to answer. They plan to test whether planting wildflowers around crop fields can improve farmers’ fruit yield by attracting more bees — particularly wild, native bees — to the fields.

“Honeybees are one species. There are thousands of native bees that are out in the environment, doing what they do,” said Claudio Gratton, professor of entomology at UW–Madison and leader of the group carrying out the research. [For more, click here].