Title:
|
Effects of honeybees on wild pollinators and pollination services in the UK
|
This thesis addresses various aspects of the role of competition between European
honeybees and wild pollinators on pollinator community structure and pollination
services.
In experimental studies in flight cages, the presence of foraging honeybees led to a
decrease in visitation rate of bumblebees and increased their flower handling time. The
travelling rime that bumblebees spent flying between flowers showed a positive
relationship with number of honeybees per flower.
In a field study, the proximity to a honeybee apiary significantly decreased the
abundance of different groups of pollinators. Species richness and diversity of wild
pol1inators also declined with proximity to the honeybee apiary, except for
bumblebees. Pollination service significantly declined with the increase in distance
from the apiary.
In a field study assessing the development of experimental bumblebee colonies, those
located near the honeybee apiary produced fewer queens and smaller queens and
males. The offspring sex-ratio was significantly more male-biased in colonies closer to
the apiary, which is less costly, but may result in lower fitness depending on the
population sex ratio. Average colony weight near the apiary was lower in one of the
two years.
Finally, in an experimental study of plant pollination success, I found that pollinator
performance (in terms of pollen transferring and their contribution to seed set)
depended on the plant species, as bumblebees were more efficient on oilseed rape than
honeybees and hoverflies while they did not differ from honeybees in terms of field
bean pollination and seed set.
Together these studies support the idea that honeybees interfere with foraging activity
of wild pollinators. For bumblebees, the presence of high density of honeybees can
negatively affect colony fitness. For the plant species that I studied, there were clear
differences in the quality of visits for pollination between the species. However, this
did not lead to lower seed set, because honeybee numbers overcompensated for the
lower numbers of wild pollinators
|