Melanie Ebert

Dr. Tredick

Wildlife Management

26 April 2019

The Publics Perceptions of Various Pollinators

Introduction

Pollination, one of the great ecosystem services that insects provide, is often associated

with honey bees which in the U.S. are an introduced species from Europe. While honey bees are

essential pollinators, there are many other important pollinators such as native bees, wasps and

butterflies that aren’t talked about as often. With the price of honey bee colonies increasing, it

may be important to look towards native pollinators once again (Hanes et al, 2015). This may be

a problem because pollinator populations are currently declining due to many issues such as

climate change, introduction of non-native species, spread of pathogens, landscape altercation

and use of pesticides (Senapathi et al, 2015). Attitudes towards insect conservation can be

difficult because it can be hard to make people care about an animal that isn’t warm-blooded and

covered in fur. Part of the issue is there is a gap in entomology education in U.S. school science

programs, which leads to misinformation (Ingram & Golick, 2018). In this study the attitudes

towards pollinating insects (particularly bees, wasps and butterflies) was examined to see how

public perception of them varies. This knowledge can be helpful in designing entomology

programs in schools, because biases based on misinformation can be addressed.

 Bees are the poster child for pollination for a good reason. Bees are often seen as the

most effective pollinators and due to that have a large amount of media attention. Bees are

responsible for the pollination of 70 out of the 100 crop species that are used to feed 90% of the

world (“The Most Efficient Pollinator”, n.d.). Media has used their importance to agriculture as

selling point to make people like bees more, which has had a positive response. In one study they

found that people were afraid of bees, mostly because of past experiences being stung, but there

was still an overall high willingness to protect and conserve them (SchÖnfelder & Bogner, 2017).

It’s widely known that unlike bees, wasps are disliked despite their equally important role

in the ecosystem. In one study they found that people described wasps as “negative” and

“emotive” while bees were described as “positive” and “functional”. While a part of this

perception is because of negative interactions, such as stings, the main issue is a deeply ingrained

cultural perception of wasps that discredits them for their role in the economy and ecology. A

great example of this is in the Bible, a book deeply ingrained in western culture, where there are

passages that detailed how God sent hornets as punishment. Humans have also evolved to fear

organisms that can inflict us pain such as stinging. There is even bias among scientist. In one

study they looked at 908 scientific papers that had been published since 1980 and found that only

22 of those papers were about wasps and the other 886 were about bees. Dislike for wasps is

based on a group of wasps called Vespines that only makes up 1% of stinging wasps. There are

about 67 species of Vespines that are social and that have members such as yellow-jackets and

hornets that are often involved in human-wasp conflict (Sumner et al, 2018). Most wasps are

solitary, this includes pollen wasps which are part of the Vespidae family. There is also a large

group of parasitic wasps that are tiny and stingless and cause no harm to humans. Due to the

Vespines, wasps are perceived more dangerous than bees even though their sting is equally as
likely to cause an allergic reaction as a bee sting. Despite their negative perception, wasps are

both beneficial pollinators and fierce predators to harmful pests. They have just as much value as

bees and need to be protected as such (Sumner et al, 2018).

Butterflies are another popular pollinator among the public. They are highly aesthetic

pollinators that seems to be loved (or at least tolerated) even by insect despisers. They are large

and often have colorful wings that brings them a lot of attention. Iconic species such as

Monarchs are often in the media because of their charismatic nature. In a study about monarchs

and butterfly conservation, they found that people thought that butterfly conservation was

important (Penn et al, 2018). Despite their reputation as avid pollinators, they are not as effective

as other insects such as wasps, bees and flies. Although, there is not too many studies on

butterflies as pollinators. Butterflies are often more important pollinators in tropical regions

rather than temperate ones. Butterflies do serve an important purpose in pollination though. They

assist in cross pollination of plants farther away from each other because they tend to travel

longer distances than other pollinators. Plants benefit from this because it increases their genetic

diversity (Moisset, 2017).

Methods

For this survey bees, wasps and butterflies were specifically chosen because they are all

pollinators that illicit a strong reaction from the public, for varying reasons. The survey was

made on Google Forms and distributed through Facebook. The target audience supposed to be a

diverse group of people with different backgrounds.

Respondents were asked their age, gender and if they identified as nature lovers so that a

demographic could be defined. Age and gender were asked at the end of the survey so avoid
respondents feeling the survey was too invasive. The hope was that it would increase the

response rate (Needham & Vaske, 2008). Respondents were asked to rate their feelings on each

pollinator so that a general overview of people’s attitudes towards each could be quantified. The

respondents were then asked to expand on their feelings towards each insect in paragraph form.

The responses were limited to two sentences to avoid any excessive answers. These questions

were included so that the respondent’s feelings towards each pollinator could be sorted into

categories and further examined. The respondents were asked if they knew insect populations

were declining to gauge if education on this issue is reaching the public. They were also asked if

they would be willing to create a pollinator garden. This was to assess the respondents

willingness to help out pollinators.

To analyze the short answers data each insect got its own set of “codes” because the

respondents concerns varied a great amount. Bees codes were aesthetics (P), essential to

environment, honey, pollinator and sting/allergic/fear. Pollinator and essential to the

environment became separate categories to avoid the assumption that the respondents who

answered knew why bees are environmentally essential. The “P” next to aesthetics is referring to

it being positively aesthetic. An “N” will be put next to aesthetics if it is negative.

Sting/allergic/fear were clumped together because they are all mostly derived from the same

situation. Wasp codes were aesthetic (N), aesthetic (P), aggression, essential to environment,

pests, sting/allergic/fear, and useless to environment. Categories such as pest and useless to the

environment were added because there was a decent amount of responses specifically listing

them as an issue. Aggression was made its own category because many of the respondents were

separating it from stinging, allergies and fear. Butterfly codes were aesthetics (N), aesthetics (P),

essential to environment, harmless, and pollinator. Harmless was added to the code because a
decent amount of people included it in their response. Quite a few of the of the responses fell

into two categories, so there is a lot of duplicate responses in the final analysis. All data was

analyzed using Microsoft Excel.

Results

65 responses were collected in total from March 23rd, 2019 to April 26, 2019.

Age Composition Gender Composition Nature Lover

Age Range % Gender % Response %

option
18-30 34.4 Female 69.2 Yes 84.6

31-50 10.9 Male 30.8 Neutral 13.8

51-70 53.1 Other 0 No 1.5

71-100 1.6 Prefer not to 0 ___ ___

say

Table 1: Age and gender composition in percentage form and response composition of nature

lovers’ question in percentage form.

Demographics

The majority age group that responded at 53.1% was people age 51-70. The age range

18-30 came in second at 34.4% and in third was 31-50 at 10.9%. The age group 71-100 was the

least at 1.6%. Most respondents were female at 69.2%. The percentage of male respondents was
30.8%. Nobody answered other, or “prefer not to say”. 84.6% of respondents considered

themselves nature lovers while 13.8% were neutral (Table 1).

Bees Wasps Butterflies

Response % % %
I strongly like them 36.9 6.2 58.5
I like them 41.5 7.7 33.8
I’m neutral 13.8 24.6 4.6
I dislike them 6.2 40 0
I strongly dislike 1.5 21.5 3.1
them
Table 2: Response percentages for “How do you feel about ______ “ questions.

General Attitudes

Wasps were the most disliked with the sum of negative response percentage being 61.5%.

Only 13.9% of the respondents felt positive feelings towards wasps and 24.6% were neutral.

Butterflies were the most liked with 92.3% of the respondents having positive feeling towards

the, and only 4.6 % felt neutral. 3.1 % of respondents had negative feelings towards butterflies.

Bees acceptance was still very good with 78.4% of respondents having positive feelings towards

them. 13.8% felt neutral towards bees and 7.7% of respondents felt negatively towards bees

(table 2).

Bees Wasps Butterflies

 Bee code % Wasp code % Butterfly %
Code

Aesthetics (P) 7 Aesthetics (P) 2 Aesthetics (P) 68

Pollinator 26 Aesthetics (N) 6 Aesthetics (N) 5

Honey 11 Aggression 18 Pollinator 6

Essential to 40 Essential to 11 Essential to 9

environment environment environment
Sting/Allergic/ 16 Pests 10 Harmless 12
Fear
___ ___ Useless to 10 ___ ___
Environment

___ ___ Sting/Allergic/ 43 ___ ___

Fear

Table 3: Summary of coded short answer responses. This gives a broader view of why people

feel the way they do about certain pollinators.

Reasons for Attitudes

Almost all the bee’s responses were positive. The highest percentage was the essential to

environment category at 40%, with pollinator coming in second at 26%. The aesthetics (P)

category was the smallest at 7%. Only 16% of respondent’s main fears were stings, being scared

and being allergic. 11% of respondents were happy that bees provide honey (table 3).

Almost all the wasp’s responses were negative. The highest % was the sting/allergic/fear

category at 43%. The second highest was the aggression category at 18%. 10% of the
respondents said wasps were useless to the environment and another 10% called them pests.

Only 11% said that wasps were essential to the environment (table 3).

Butterflies had an overwhelmingly positive response. 68% of respondents said they like

the butterflies for their aesthetic value. 12% said they were harmless and 9% said they were

essential to the environment. 6% of respondents noted that butterflies are also good for

pollination. There was a small negative response, 5% of people disliked the aesthetics of

butterflies (table 3).

Response Did you know that Would you be willing to

pollinators create a garden with
are declining? flowers
specifically for pollinators?
Yes 89.2% 66.2%
Maybe ___ 29.2%
No 10.8% 4.6%
Table 4: responses to questions about pollinators in general.

Most of the respondents, 89% to be exact, knew that pollinator populations were

declining. Only 10.8% did not know that pollinator populations are declining. 66.2% of people

would be willing to create a garden specifically for pollinators, and 29.2% said maybe. 4.6% said

they would not consider building a garden specifically for pollinators (table 4).

Discussion

The results of people’s attitudes towards bees, wasps and butterflies reflected the

literature review very well. Bees still have some fear behind them, but efforts in media to educate

the public about them has seem to be working. People mostly associated them with being

essential to the environment and pollinating rather than their tendency to sting. Butterflies are

well love pollinators still. They had an amazingly positive response. Wasps are still getting a bad
reputation. The respondents associated wasps mostly with stinging, fear and aggression. The

misinformation that wasps are useless to the environment also seemed to be prevalent. One

finding that I did not expect is that people were saying wasps are pests. They said that it was

because they build ugly nest in manmade structures. The way they described the nests and their

locations I believe they were talking about paper wasps. This goes back to the notion that a small

amount of the wasp’s species is projecting negative tendencies on the entire taxa.

The biggest take away I have from this study is that entomology needs to be taught more

efficiently in k-12 schools. Insects are incredibly important but sorely misunderstood. In cases

such as the wasp, misinformation can cause a lot of issues and hatred. Since pollinator

populations are declining, there is no room to exclude something as important as wasps just

because the general public doesn’t like it. I was glad to see most of the people that took the

survey knew that pollinator population were declining. I was also pleasantly surprised that more

than half the respondents would be willing to create a garden for pollinators. It shows that there

is hope for pollinators, and insects of all kind if education persists.

I think my survey was effective for the answers I wanted. In the future I would use a

survey with a similar set up, but I would include more pollinators such as flies and beetles. I

would also find a way to send it out to more people so that I would have a more evenly

distributed age and gender group. Also, the more input the better.

Bibliography

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