Intensive management practices in the Midwestern United States associated with soybean (Glycine max) cultivation decrease bee diversity by reducing suitable nesting and floral resource availability. Recent studies showed that soybean production may be enhanced with bee pollination, which suggest possible mutualisms between bees and soybean in intensively managed landscapes. Methods to increase bee diversity focus on enhancing available resources outside crop fields, but do not address the lack of available nesting substrate or the species composition of bee communities within large and intensively managed crop fields. In a small-scale field experiment, we previously investigated effects of nesting habitat enhancement strips within plots of soybeans on the bee community and their pollination services to soybean. Our findings of reduced soybean yield in the absence of pollinators and an enhanced yield in the presence of supplemental nesting habitat suggest native ground-dwelling bees may enhance soybean yield in intensively managed production areas where plants are in proximity to available nesting habitat. Here, we focus on comparing bee communities within large soybean monocultures and our experimental plots. Within five intensively managed soybean fields adjacent to forest fragments in SW Ohio and SE Indiana, bees were sampled at distances up to 200 m from the forest edge during the flowering period of soybean. We discuss how the species composition, and composition of functional attributes, of the bee community change with distance into the crop field during the soybean bloom to further distinguish potential target species for ground-nesting enhancement strips within intensively managed soybean crop.
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