Determining if honey bees (Apis mellifera) collect pollen from anemophilous plants in the UK

Abstract

Whether insect pollinators use wind-pollinated plants have implications for insect monitoring and conservation strategies in a wide range of environments. Habitats, such as coniferous plantations and arable crops of the Poaceae family are not typically considered priority for the monitoring of insect pollinators or habitat enhancement. Further many pollinator monitoring techniques focus on flowers and do not count insect interactions with wind-pollinated plants. Using two honey bee colonies from distinct environments (urban and rural) in north east England, we investigate the use of wind-pollinated plants over the summer of 2021. We combine honey bee pollen pellet analysis with airborne pollen sampling to investigate whether honey bees use three common wind-pollinated plant groups (Pinus sp., Plantago sp. and Poaceae) that have previously been considered sources of forage. Our results show that honey bees do forage on Plantago and Poaceae pollen, in line with previous studies. However, we show statistically that Pinus pollen is contamination from the atmosphere and not actively collected. It is important to consider airborne contamination before making interpretations based on small amounts of pollen in samples of bee products. The use of members of the Poaceae has implications for insect pollinator monitoring in urban environments, which has not always been considered in past studies.

Floral resources used by bees in urban areas: the case of Geneva, Switzerland

“…Error bars represent standard deviation, stars and letters represent significant differences: ***<0.001. essential nutrients (Wood et al, 2022). This suggests that domestic bees are not able to find more attractive pollinic resource at that time in agricultural land, consequently collecting any resources they find because they need to store important quantities of pollen for their brood to survive winter (Pound et al, 2022). We did not observe the same trend in urban colonies, that seem to continue finding resources from typically melliferous species, such as Trifolium or Potentilla, even in the summer months.…”

Contrasting patterns of foraging behavior in neotropical stingless bees using pollen and honey metabarcoding

“…Cyperaceae, Poaceae, Taxaceae and Pinaceae) is relatively common in melisso-palynological studies 12 , 22 , 46 . Despite previous studies demonstrating that pollen from anemophilous species might be a contamination in melisso-palynological samples 48 , bees are regularly reported visiting such taxa 49 , 50 . Our results confirm active collection of pollen from anemophilous species, since their abundance in our analyzed samples is relatively high.…”

Contrasting patterns of foraging behavior in Neotropical stingless bees using pollen and honey metabarcoding

“…The presence of non-melitophyllous angiosperms and gymnosperms is relatively common in melissopalynological studies: Cyperaceae, Poaceae, Taxaceae and Pinaceae 22,45,47 . Despite previous studies demonstrating that pollen from anemophilous species might be a contamination in melissopalynological samples 48 , bees are regularly reported visiting such taxa 49,50 . Our results confirm active collection of pollen from anemophilous species, since their abundance in our analyzed samples is relatively high.…”