What pollinated flowers before settlers brought over honeybees?
It’s true that honeybees aren’t native to the United States. Honeybees are considered a "cultivated" species. This means that people brought them from another part of the world, Europe in this case, to rear and care for them so that they can collect their wax and honey. Before that, flowers relied solely on native pollinators.
There are over 4,000 species of bees native to the United States such as bumble, digger, leafcutter, polyester, mason, carpenter and sweat bees. There are no common names for most species so they are only known by their scientific names. Most species of native bees are overlooked because they are usually small, solitary and may be out only one month of the year, timing their emergence to the peak flowering time in their area. They do make small amounts of honey but it is not collectable by humans. Their economic value is pollination, seed production and fruit formation. They are probably the most abundant pollinators in the wild. In scientific tests in the forest, only 2% of the bees found there were honeybees.
The native bees are more efficient pollinators than honeybees, especially of native plants. This is because the native bees are better adapted to the local climate and plants. Many native bees are active in early spring before honeybee colonies reach a large enough size to do much pollinating. Native bees also fly faster allowing them to pollinate more plants than honeybees can and the males of native bees also pollinate unlike honeybees.
One orchard mason bee can do the same work of 160 honeybees.
Most native bees have a mild sting and aren’t aggressive because most are solitary, with the noted exception of bumblebees, and there isn’t a colony to defend. Most species nest in either the ground or in wood such as hollow plant stems.
Europeans already accommodate native bees they way we do hummingbirds and butterflies. The best way to do this is to understand their life-cycles, provide nesting habitat and appropriate foraging flowers and to stop using pesticides.