E-Mail Residential gardens are a poor substitute for native bushland and increasing urbanisation is a growing threat when it comes to bees, Curtin University research has found. Published in 'Urban Ecosystems', the research looked at bee visits to flowers, which form pollination networks across different native bushland and home garden habitats. Lead author, Forrest Foundation Scholar Miss Kit Prendergast, from Curtin's School of Molecular and Life Sciences said the findings highlight the need to prevent destruction of remaining bushland and preserve native vegetation, in order to protect sustainable bee communities and their pollination services. "Our study involved spending hundreds of hours at 14 sites on the Swan Coastal Plain at Perth, Western Australia, recording which bees visited which flowers in the two types of habitats - gardens and native bushland," Miss Prendergast said.