To discover the pollinator community of canola (Brassica napus L.) and the best pollinators for canola production, an experiment was performed at the research farm of Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan. The insect pollinator community was composed of 35 species in 3 orders and 14 families. Most of the bees (Hymenoptera) and a butterfly species (Lepidoptera) foraged for nectar, whereas all the flies (Diptera) foraged either for pollen or both nectar and pollen. Eight major pollinators were tested for their pollination efficiency. The nectar-robbing behavior of many species made it difficult to judge the efficiency of an insect on the basis of visitation rate and stay time; therefore, the amounts of pollen deposited and pollen harvested per visit were also measured. The single visit efficiency in terms of the number of seeds per pod revealed that Apis dorsata, A. florea, and Halictus sp. were superior for canola pollination, having Spears' values of 1.62, 1.55 and 1.73, respectively. With the increase in the number of seeds per pod, seed weight per pod also increased, confirming the importance of these three pollinator species in canola production.

Seasonal turnover in plant and floral visitor communities changes the structure of the network of interactions they are involved in. Despite the dynamic nature of plant–visitor networks, a usual procedure is to pool year‐round interaction data into a single network which may result in a biased depiction of the real structure of the interaction network. The annual temporal dynamics and the effect of merging monthly data have previously been described for qualitative data (i.e. describing the occurrence of interactions) alone, while its quantitative aspect (i.e. the actual frequency with which interactions occur) remain little explored. For this, we built a set of 12 monthly networks describing year‐round plant–floral visitor interactions in a 30‐hectare planted forest and its adjacent agricultural landscape at Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan, Pakistan. A total of 80 plant and 162 insect species, which engaged in 1573 unique interactions, were recorded. Most network properties (particularly the number of plants, visitors and unique interactions) varied markedly during the year. Data aggregation showed that while animal species, plant species, unique interaction, weighted nestedness, interaction diversity and robustness increased, connectance and specialization decreased. The only metric which seemed relatively unaffected by data pooling was interaction evenness. In general, quantitative metrics were relatively less affected by temporal data aggregation than qualitative ones. Avoiding data aggregation not only gives a more realistic depiction of the dynamic nature of plant–visitor community networks, but also avoids biasing network metrics and, consequently, their expected response to disturbances such as the loss of species.

Being the ultimate beneficiary of ecosystem services provided by on-farm agricultural biodiversity, the participation of farmers in its sustainable utilization and conservation is crucial. How much aware they are with the significance and conservation of agricultural biodiversity in order to improve their crop yield remains unclear, especially from the developing courtiers. Pollination is one of such ecosystem services, enormously contributed by the wild bees. In the present study, we have investigated the knowledge of farmers about bees and pollination in general in three districts i.e. Multan, Bahawalpur and Khanewal of southern Punjab, Pakistan. Some 300 farmers (100 cucurbit growers in each district using convenient sampling method) were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire. Respondents were first presented with a box of insect specimens and then were asked to identify bees among those. Those who identified correctly were asked to state about their nesting sites. Only 11% of the respondents could correctly identify the bees and half of them could report something about nesting sites. A majority (63%) of the farmers was unable to tell fertilization requirements in cucurbits, 59% could not distinguish female flower from the male flower and 64% could not state any benefit of bees. However, upon briefing about the significance of bee pollinators, 58% of the farmers showed eagerness to conserve bees at their farms. Keeping in view the inadequacies of farmers' knowledge about wild bees and pollination in general, the present study also gives some policy recommendations.

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The yearlong association of two native honey bee species (Apis dorsata and A. florea) with 49 plant species was recorded in a planted forest and adjacent agricultural landscape at Multan, Pakistan. The study resulted in 588 interactions of A. dorsata with 40 plant species and 454 interactions of A. florea on 38 plant species. The most visited plants species by A. dorsata included Helianthus annuus, Citrus reticulata, Trifolium alexandrinum, Moringa oleifera and Calotropis procera, while the most visited plant species by A. florea included C. procera, Mangifera indica, T. alexandrinum, Coriandrum sativum and H. annuus. The peak abundance of bees and floral resources (i.e. number of plant species in flowering and abundance of floral units) was recorded during early March to late May followed by a gradual decline until December. Monthly abundance of both bee species was positively related to the floral resources, negatively related to relative humidity while it was not significantly related to temperature. The current study may serve as a baseline to track the degradation in ecosystem service of cross pollination and making new conservation strategies at local scale while future research should focus on tempo-spatial variations in foraging preferences, floral constancy and effect of foraging competition on crop pollination in different ecological regions of Pakistan.