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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchUnmown strips can attract pollinators immediately after nearby dike vegetation is cut, but a field experiment in the Netherlands found that the boost did not last: weeks later, partially mown sites had fewer pollinators and fewer species than dikes left unmown. The result suggests that retaining a strip helps in the short term, but is not a substitute for continuous unmown habitat.
What the dike experiment found
In a 2023 field experiment near Nijmegen, researchers compared partially mown dike sections with unmown controls. At the mown sites, about two-thirds of the vegetation was cut and an unmown strip was left in the middle. Immediately after mowing, pollinator visitation frequency at the partial-mowing sites rose by 85%, and pollinator abundance rose by 25%.
The initial increase was temporary. In later sampling, conducted up to four weeks after mowing, total pollinator abundance and species richness were significantly higher in unmown controls than at the partially mown sites. The study describes pollinators as abandoning the refuges, but that does not mean every insect left at the same time: the later comparison covers a period after the immediate response, not a precise moment when all insects departed.
The peer-reviewed study, “Unequal pollinator benefits from partial mowing regimes in a field experiment,” was first published online on October 1, 2026, in Insect Conservation and Diversity. The researchers recorded 28,553 flower-visitation events over 167 observation hours. The article’s results section reports 4,570 identified pollinators across 94 species; its abstract gives a slightly different total of 4,530, so the exact count is not consistent within the paper.
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Wild bees and honeybees responded differently
The short-term increase in insect activity did not translate into similar outcomes for every pollinator group. In the paper’s reported comparison for partially mown locations, abundance of wild bees other than bumblebees (Bombus) fell by 82%, and their species richness fell by 70%. Honeybees, by contrast, maintained high abundance.
The researchers did not find a compensating influx of later-season species at the partially mown sites during the study period. That matters because a site can still appear busy—especially when honeybees are abundant—while supporting fewer kinds of pollinators overall.
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Why might insects leave the refuge?
The experiment documents the pattern but does not prove a single cause. The authors suggest that pollinators concentrating in a smaller refuge could face more competition for flowers, contributing to later movement and declines. Reduced floral resources after mowing may also be relevant. These are proposed explanations, not mechanisms established by a direct test in this experiment.
The authors also note that honeybees made up a large share of pollinators in this system, which may help explain why the results differ from some earlier studies. The finding should therefore be read as evidence about the tested dikes and community—not as a universal forecast for every meadow, pollinator group, or mowing regime.
What the experiment can—and cannot—say about mowing
The study took place from May 30 through June 28, 2023, on five south-facing sections along the southern Waal dike near Nijmegen, Netherlands. Three sections were partially mown on June 3 with a bar mower; roughly 66% of the vegetation was cut, leaving a central unmown strip. The researchers sampled before mowing, during the first four days afterward, and later in the following weeks.
- It supports: on these dikes, the retained strip coincided with an immediate rise in visitation and abundance, followed by lower abundance and species richness than in unmown controls during later sampling.
- It does not establish: that every strip width, mowing date, cutting method, region, or pollinator community will respond the same way. The experiment tested one partial-mowing arrangement, not a range of refuge sizes or alternative mowing schedules.
- It did not test: machinery comparisons, mowing costs, or landscape-wide schedules. Those should not be presented as measured outcomes of this study.
What the results mean for dike management
The authors’ central conclusion is that unmown refuges can offer initial relief but do not substitute for unmown vegetation. That distinction is useful for anyone weighing partial mowing against leaving habitat intact: a strip may preserve flowers and provide a temporary refuge, yet the experiment found it did not maintain pollinator abundance and diversity at the level of the unmown controls weeks later.
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Lead researcher Constant Swinkels of Radboud University recommends taking a landscape-level view: coordinate mowing timing with nearby flowering grassland and stagger mowing among dikes. This is a management interpretation offered by the researcher, not a landscape-scale comparison tested in the experiment. The practical point is to consider whether flowering habitat remains available nearby over time, rather than treating one retained strip as a complete solution.
Sources: Swinkels et al., “Unequal pollinator benefits from partial mowing regimes in a field experiment,” Insect Conservation and Diversity; Radboud University research summary carried by Phys.org, October 5, 2026.
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