Honey bees compete with wild bees for resources in farmlands, but nutritious plantings of wildflowers can mitigate these effects.
In 2017, Maureen Page began collecting 1000’s of bees from wildflower plantings adjoining to almond orchards in California’s Central Valley. Surprisingly, she claims that in two years of collecting bees, she has never been stung.
At the time, she was a graduate student at the University of California, Davis, and he or she wondered whether honeybees introduced into farmlands used to pollinate crops is likely to be harming native bee species by competing with them for resources. This competition can deprive wild bees of the pollen and nectar they need to supply healthy offspring.
Attempts to alleviate these concerns include planting wildflowers around farmland to increase available resources for native bees. “Planting wildflowers is becoming an increasingly popular tool to support diverse bee populations in farmlands,” Page said. “But at the same time, there are major concerns about honey bee competition with native bees and how generally high numbers of non-native honey bees in agricultural fields may interfere with the ability of wildflower plantings to support a variety of bees.”
To learn how wildflower planting and honey bee competition affects the eating regimen of wild bees, Page documented the bee species in the orchard, analyzed the pollen the bees collected, and determined whether specific wildflowers could help solve the problem of resource competition amongst bees.
Page and her team hope to get to the bottom of the issue to make sure a more sustainable future for struggling crops and bee species.
Learning from the field
The team collected samples from five locations in California almond orchards between April and May over two years. They walked the same paths in the morning and afternoon to gather bees and discover flowers growing along the path.
They rigorously removed pollen from the bees’ bodies, analyzed the dietary value of the pollen and what flowers it got here from. The pollen they collect serves as an indicator of the bee’s food consumption.
The team focused on two indicators of pollen nutrition: protein content and protein-to-lipid ratio. Lipids, that are a gaggle of fatty compounds including fats, waxes and steroids, play a task in immune function, growth and development. Protein levels in pollen influence native bees’ reproduction and the body size of offspring, Page added.
The team found 49 species of bees in the chosen areas, but not all species responded similarly to honey bee competition. “While we observed negative impacts from honey bee competition, it was also clear that impacts varied by species,” Page said.
They noticed that the number of honey bees negatively affected the protein content of pollen collected by bumblebees, but they didn’t observe any effect of honey bees on the eating regimen of sweat bees. Mason bees suffered in areas where certain types of wildflowers were known to be less nutritious for them, but the team found that their eating regimen was not affected in the event that they had access to wildflowers of higher dietary quality.
This finding points to a technique by which farmers can use wildflowers containing higher dietary pollen to counteract any negative effects of honey bee competition. But how feasible would this be in practice?
Sewing wildflowers to support native bees
While Page and her team suggest there are methods to mitigate the negative impact of honeybees on native bees by selecting highly nutritious plant-wildflower blends, this shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all approach. The best wildflower mix for one place might not be the best for an additional, with radically different climates, native bee populations, and crops.
“If you would like to extrapolate [the conclusions of this study] to a different region of the country, we might must use plants native to that part,” said Juliana Rangel, a professor at Texas A&M University who was not involved in the research.
Page also adds that “it’s worth thinking about the floral landscape, not just in terms of the abundance of flowers… but it’s also worth thinking about the nutrient landscape and what those resources are. Can we choose plants to ensure that all bees have access to nutritious sources of pollen and nectar?”
In addition to finding the right kit in your specific region, you furthermore mght need to think about time. “You would need to time the planting blooming season with the wildflower blooming season,” Rangel said.
Whether this strategy is possible or not may rely upon the farm and its willingness to take a position resources in such initiatives in specific farming regions.
While this study focused specifically on farmland, Page points out that home gardens may also play a task. “In situations where individuals are concerned about honey bee competition and its impact on native bees, one potential tool to cut back the impact of competition is planting various, nutritious flowers“
