Premise Many animals provide ecosystem services in the form of pollination including honeybees, which have become globally dominant floral visitors. A rich literature documents considerable variation in single visit pollination effectiveness, but this literature has yet to be extensively synthesized to address whether honeybees are effective pollinators. Methods We conducted a hierarchical meta‐analysis of 168 studies and extracted 1564 single visit effectiveness (SVE) measures for 240 plant species. We paired SVE data with visitation frequency data for 69 of these studies. We used these data to ask three questions: (1) Do honeybees (Apis mellifera) and other floral visitors differ in their SVE? (2) To what extent do plant and pollinator attributes predict differences in SVE between honeybees and other visitors? (3) Is there a correlation between visitation frequency and SVE? Results Honeybees were significantly less effective than the most effective non‐honeybee pollinators but were as effective as the average pollinator. The type of pollinator moderated these effects. Honeybees were less effective compared to the most effective and average bird and bee pollinators but were as effective as other taxa. Visitation frequency and SVE were positively correlated, but this trend was largely driven by data from communities where honeybees were absent. Conclusions Although high visitation frequencies make honeybees important pollinators, they were less effective than the average bee and rarely the most effective pollinator of the plants they visit. As such, honeybees may be imperfect substitutes for the loss of wild pollinators, and safeguarding pollination will benefit from conservation of non‐honeybee taxa.

Bumble bees are among the best-studied bee groups worldwide, yet surprisingly we know almost nothing about their overwintering habitats nor the microsite characteristics that govern selection of these sites. This gap represents a critical barrier for their conservation, especially if preferred overwintering habitats differ from foraging and nesting habitats. Current conservation plans focus on foraging habitat, potentially creating a problem of partial habitats where improved forage might fail to prevent population declines due to limited overwintering sites. We provide the first data on the overwintering habitat for any western North American bumble bee. Our data suggest that overwintering and foraging habitats are likely distinct, and queens' selection of overwintering sites may be shaped by environmental stressors of the year. In our study area, queens overwintered in litter beneath cypress trees, where no floral resources exist. Whether this separation of overwintering and foraging habitat holds for other bumble bee species remains to be discovered. Our data highlight the need to consider the whole life cycle for understanding population dynamics and conservation planning. This need is underscored by growing evidence for the decline of multiple North American bumble bee species.

1. Heatwaves are an increasingly common extreme weather event across the globe and are projected to surge in frequency and severity in the coming decades.Plant-pollinator mutualisms are vulnerable due to interacting effects of extreme heat on insect pollinator foraging behaviour and their forage plants.2. We designed an experiment to parse the impact of extreme heat on bumblebee foraging mediated directly through air temperature and indirectly through changes in plant rewards.3. Temperatures simulating a moderate heatwave negatively impacted foraging bumblebees reducing the proportion of successful foraging bouts, foraging bout duration and plant and flower visitation and indirect stress through reduced nectar production that limited foraging bout duration. 4. Our experimental results provide a mechanistic link between climate, plants and pollinators and suggest in situ conditions from heatwaves could have profound negative consequences for bumblebee colony persistence and maintenance of pollination services.

1. While feeding, foragers can alter their environment. Such alteration constitutes ecological niche construction (ENC) if it enables future benefits for the constructor and conspecific individuals. The environmental modification may also affect non-constructing, bystander species, especially if they share resources with constructor species. If so, ENC could confer the constructor species a competitive advantage by both enhancing its foraging returns and reducing those of bystander species. 2. Expectations -(E1) ENC frequency should vary positively with the recent and current density of the constructor species, and (E2) constructors should use modifications disproportionately. In contrast, bystanders should (E3) experience intensified competition for the affected resource, and (E4) exhibit diverse, possibly mitigating, responses to ENC, depending on opportunity and relative benefits.3. We investigated these expectations in Argentina for competition for Fuchsia magellanica nectar between an invasive bumble bee Bombus terrestris (terr: putative constructor), which often bites holes at the bases of floral tubes to rob nectar, and native B. dahlbomii (dahl: bystander), which normally accesses Fuchsia nectar through the flower mouth (front visits). Robbing holes constitute ENC, as they persist until the 7-day flowers wilt. The dynamics of the incidence of robbed flowers, abundance of both bees and the number and types of their flower visits (front or robbing) were characterised by alternate-day surveys of plants during 2.5 months. 4. After initially accessing Fuchsia nectar via front visits, terr switched to robbing and its abundance on Fuchsia increased 20-fold within 10 days (E2). Correspondingly, the incidence of robbed flowers varied positively with recent and past terr abundance (E1). In contrast, dahl abundance remained low and varied negatively with the incidence of robbed flowers (E3). When terr ceased visiting Fuchsia, dahl abundance increased sixfold within 10 days (E3), possibly because many dahl previously had avoided competition with terr by feeding on other plant species | 581