Honeybees are basically an invasive species that humans brought to the Americas in order to pollinate old-world crops (and also harvest honey). The thing is, we've replaced a lot of native new-world ecosystems and foods with old-world crops that depend on old-world bees.
There are a few separate problems that the media often mixes up:
One is that our old-world crops aren't getting enough old-world bees to meet their pollination needs.
Separately, new-world bees (what the article calls "wild bees") are also being replaced by old-world bees, losing out in competition, and not being cared for by professional beekeepers. They're more vulnerable, less protected, and less monitored.
To top it all off, many kinds of bees, old-world or new, are also suffering from the cumulative (and unfortunately complex) domino effects of habitat loss, pesticides, climate change, etc.
I think what's happening in the media is that journalists, knowingly or not, are using #2 and #3 to amplify the concern of #1 even though they're not always aligned (e.g., old-world bees are often one of the reasons contributing to the decline of native new-world bees).
It's relatively harder to get the public to care about an industrial economics problem (#1, where farmers have to resort to expensive human manual pollination instead of cheap bees), so trying to sell that as environmental crisis a la Silent Spring gets more eyeballs.
Blueberries, sunflowers, and cranberries are all native to North America. The things Europeans sometimes call "blueberries" (bilberries) are an entirely different species.
Yes, the old world bees sometimes do pollinate the native crops too, and vice versa. It's not a completely separate Venn diagram. The studies discuss and analyze the degrees of crossover.
There are a few separate problems that the media often mixes up:
One is that our old-world crops aren't getting enough old-world bees to meet their pollination needs.
Separately, new-world bees (what the article calls "wild bees") are also being replaced by old-world bees, losing out in competition, and not being cared for by professional beekeepers. They're more vulnerable, less protected, and less monitored.
To top it all off, many kinds of bees, old-world or new, are also suffering from the cumulative (and unfortunately complex) domino effects of habitat loss, pesticides, climate change, etc.
I think what's happening in the media is that journalists, knowingly or not, are using #2 and #3 to amplify the concern of #1 even though they're not always aligned (e.g., old-world bees are often one of the reasons contributing to the decline of native new-world bees).
It's relatively harder to get the public to care about an industrial economics problem (#1, where farmers have to resort to expensive human manual pollination instead of cheap bees), so trying to sell that as environmental crisis a la Silent Spring gets more eyeballs.