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Using the waggle dance to determine the spatial ecology of honey bees during commercial crop pollination
Author(s) -
Balfour Nicholas J.,
Ratnieks Francis L. W.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
agricultural and forest entomology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.755
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1461-9563
pISSN - 1461-9555
DOI - 10.1111/afe.12204
Subject(s) - pollination , biology , foraging , pear , crop , honey bee , pollinator , ecology , pollen , botany
Managed honey bees play an important role in global crop pollination. Maximizing their potential is likely to be of increasing importance to the human food supply. We explored the potential of waggle dance data to determine the spatial ecology of honey bees sited in a crop under commercial pollination. Over two springs, we video recorded and then decoded 834 waggle dances from colonies located in two apple and pear farms in K ent, U.K . We also obtained pollen samples from returning foragers and quantified the insects visiting apple and pear flowers. The vast majority (84%) of dances were for locations outside of the orchards in which our colonies were located. Accounting for the distance of orchards and oilseed rape fields from the study colonies, the amount of foraging per hectare in oilseed rape fields was greater than in orchards. The results of the present study indicate that maximizing the pollination services of managed honey bee colonies requires an landscape level approach that takes into account farm and foraging scale, as well as competing floral sources. The data also suggest that oilseed rape is a significant competitor to apple and pear flowers for honey bee visits.