Dec 22, 2015 10:54 AM EST By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Previous research has detailed the kind of trouble honeybees are in across the nation, but a new study indicates they are doing the worst in areas where they are most needed.

Published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the new study examined honeybee populations in agricultural counties across the U.S. The identified 139 counties in which honeybees are disappearing while crops in need of pollination continue to grow, The Los Angeles Times reported.

"Until this study, we didn't have a national mapped picture about the status of wild bees and their impacts on pollination," study lead author Insu Koh, a researcher at the University of Vermont's Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, said in a press release. "Now we have a map of the hotspots.

"It's the first spatial portrait of pollinator status and impacts in the U.S."

The agricultural counties in most trouble of losing honeybees are in California and the Pacific Northwest, the Northern region of the Midwest, the Mississippi River Valley, and West Texas.

"Most people can think of one or two types of bee, but there are 4,000 species in the U.S. alone," study senior author Taylor Ricketts, a Gund professor at UVM's Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, said in the release. "Wild bees are a precious natural resource we should celebrate and protect. If managed with care, they can help us continue to produce billions of dollars in agricultural income and a wonderful diversity of nutritious food."

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