(KXAN) – A study by Agricultural Research Service, which is the in-house research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, showed honey bees revisit the same flower patch more often than bumble bees to collect pollen and nectar.
ARS said the study shows 76% of honey bees revisited the same plot of alfalfa flowers in contrast to 47% of eastern bumble bees.
The scientists did find the bumble bees were more faithful to larger flower patches, while the study found the likelihood of honey bees returning to a flower patch was not affected by patch size. According to the ARS announcement, large patches in the study were nearly 15 by 15 yards, each planted with 225 plants, more than twice as many as the small patches, which were about 10 by 10 yards with 100 alfalfa plants each.
According to ARS, the study was lead by ecologist Johanne Brunet with the ARS Vegetable Crops Research Unit in Madison, Wisconsin and postdoctoral associate Fabiana Fragoso.
According to the study, an insect or animal requires reliable spatial memories enabling them to navigate complex landscapes and repeatedly return to the same site. Brunet said both honey and bumble bees have demonstrated this ability to return to previously visited foraging locations, so there must be other species-specific factors to explain the differences in patch fidelity observed between the two species.
According to the ARS, that differences in patch fidelity could be the result of bumble bees’ more explorative foraging behavior—their willingness to invest individually in foraging, often visiting more than one type of flower per foraging bout—compared to honey bees’ more highly developed communication system—the honey bees’ well-known waggle dance. Honey bee foragers perform the dance when they return to the hive to share the location of valuable food sources with other foragers; bumble bees do not.
“So higher patch fidelity of honey bees, relative to bumble bees, may reflect a greater aversion to risk, be it in terms of wasting energy and resources or encountering predators,” Brunet said.
The better our understanding of the characteristics that drive patch fidelity in important pollinators like honey bees and bumble bees, the better beekeepers, producers and conservation biologists will be able to support pollinators health as well as uphold the essential agricultural need to have crops pollinated to produce a harvest, Brunet said.
This study was published Thursday in Ecosphere.
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