Volume 213, 25 December 2015, Pages 265–271
Following the dance: Ground survey of flowers and flower-visiting insects in a summer foraging hotspot identified via honey bee waggle dance decoding
Highlights
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- The five plant species with the most flower-visitors were agricultural weeds.
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- The abundance of flowers was a key determent of flower-visitor abundance per field.
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- Field margins and hedgerows were the most flower-visitor abundant habitat type.
Abstract
Decoding
of honey bee waggle dances has previously shown that average foraging
distances are longest during July and August in Sussex, United Kingdom,
indicating a scarcity of summer floral resources. However, it also
identified a summer foraging ‘hotspot’ in agricultural land at 2–3 km
distance. Unfortunately, dance decoding does not yield precise foraging
locations or information on the flower species visited. Therefore, we
surveyed this hotspot during July and August 2012 and 2013 in order to
identify the habitats and flower species used by honey bees and other
flower-visiting insects (FVI).
The hotspot area
consisted predominantly of four habitat types potentially attractive to
FVI: pasture fields, field margins/hedgerows of arable fields, set-aside
and a National Nature Reserve. We surveyed three fields within each
habitat type. The abundance of flowers was found to be a key determent
of FVI abundance per field (p = 0.002). Field margins/hedgerows were the most flower abundant habitat type (p = 0.002) and had more than twice (235%) the FVI abundance (p = 0.001) and species richness (p = 0.035) per unit area than did pasture fields. Areas with long grass had greater flower abundance (p < 0.001) and FVI species richness (p = 0.009)
than those with short grass (≤30 cm). The five plants on which we
recorded the greatest number of FVI were species considered to be
agricultural weeds.
Honey bees represented 19% of
all FVI, showing that dance decoding had located a hotspot that was an
important foraging location not just for honey bees but also for other
types of FVI. Honey bee abundance, per transect, was strongly correlated
with that of other FVI (p = 0.001), particularly bumble bees (p
< 0.001). However, FVI groups were not found uniformly across our
study site and honey bee abundance was only weakly linked to overall
species richness (p = 0.069).
Keywords
- Waggle Dance;
- Agri-Environment;
- Flower Choice;
- Foraging;
- Environmental Stewardship Schemes;
- Weeds;
- Honey Bee
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