BEE requirements

Knowledge towards quantitative pollen requirements of solitary bees is vital for preservation of jeopardized bee types as well as the understanding of the development of bee–flower interactions. We estimate how many flowers necessary to rear just one larva for 41 European bee species (i) by researching the pollen content of brood cells using pollen amount within the flowers associated with bees’ host plants and (ii) by deducing the pollen demands from a regression model explaining the partnership between your average bee dried out human anatomy mass therefore the normal brood mobile pollen content. The rose needs associated with bee species examined fluctuate by three orders of magnitude. Based both bee types and host plant, from seven to 1100 plants or from 0.9 to 4.5 rose heads are required to back a single larva. As only about 40% associated with the pollen within a flower ended up being discovered become available to one feminine bee, these minimal figures need to be multiplied by a factor of around 2.5 to obtain an authentic estimate of bee flower needs. The amount of pollen lost from plants for bee nutrition is remarkably high. We hypothesize your recent decline of several bee species might have its main cause in a food shortage provoked by a decrease in rose variety and amount after habitat destruction and contemporary farming methods. The significant pollen losses to bees as documented within research help previous results on flowery adaptations against excessive pollen harvesting by bees.

Keywords

• Apoidea;
• Bee reproduction;
• Pollen;
• Pollen harvesting;
• Pollination;
• Megachile parietina