Exploring the External Environmental Drivers of Honey Bee Colony Development

TY - JOUR

T1 - Exploring the External Environmental Drivers of Honey Bee Colony Development

AU - Capela, Nuno

AU - Sarmento, Artur

AU - Simöes, Sandra

AU - Lopes, Sara

AU - Castro, Silvia

AU - Antonio, Alves da Silva

AU - Alves, Joana

AU - Dupont, Yoko Luise

AU - de Graaf, Dirk C.

AU - Sousa, José Paulo

PY - 2023/12

Y1 - 2023/12

N2 - Honey bees play an important role in agricultural landscapes by providing pollination services. Throughout the season, colonies increase their population and collect resources from the available flowering plants. Besides internal mechanisms, such as the amount of brood or the availability of bees to perform foraging flights, colonies are also influenced by the climate and the surrounding landscape. Therefore, exposure to different environmental contexts leads to distinct development rates. In this study, we show how colonies develop under three different landscape contexts and explore which external variables (mostly climate and resources availability) influence the colonies’ development. We installed three apiaries in three different landscapes in the Iberian Peninsula, with temporal and spatial variation in climatic conditions and resource availability. The availability of resources and their use, as well as the development of colonies throughout the season, were thoroughly investigated. These data were used to take the first step into creating an ecologically relevant landscape by calculating the number of available resources in the landscape at different points in time, based on plants’ beekeeping interest as well as nectar and production. Furthermore, climatic variables were transformed into the amount of available foraging minutes that bees had to collect resources, and a theoretical threshold of optimal vs. sub-optimal conditions was also explored. Interestingly, the main drivers of colony development (measured by daily weight increase) were not the same in the tested apiaries, evidencing how colonies are indeed intrinsically connected with the surrounding environmental scenario. Therefore, results from field testing are extremely context-dependent and should be interpreted with caution when being extrapolated to other environmental scenarios.

AB - Honey bees play an important role in agricultural landscapes by providing pollination services. Throughout the season, colonies increase their population and collect resources from the available flowering plants. Besides internal mechanisms, such as the amount of brood or the availability of bees to perform foraging flights, colonies are also influenced by the climate and the surrounding landscape. Therefore, exposure to different environmental contexts leads to distinct development rates. In this study, we show how colonies develop under three different landscape contexts and explore which external variables (mostly climate and resources availability) influence the colonies’ development. We installed three apiaries in three different landscapes in the Iberian Peninsula, with temporal and spatial variation in climatic conditions and resource availability. The availability of resources and their use, as well as the development of colonies throughout the season, were thoroughly investigated. These data were used to take the first step into creating an ecologically relevant landscape by calculating the number of available resources in the landscape at different points in time, based on plants’ beekeeping interest as well as nectar and production. Furthermore, climatic variables were transformed into the amount of available foraging minutes that bees had to collect resources, and a theoretical threshold of optimal vs. sub-optimal conditions was also explored. Interestingly, the main drivers of colony development (measured by daily weight increase) were not the same in the tested apiaries, evidencing how colonies are indeed intrinsically connected with the surrounding environmental scenario. Therefore, results from field testing are extremely context-dependent and should be interpreted with caution when being extrapolated to other environmental scenarios.

KW - climate

KW - flower resources

KW - foraging

KW - honey bee

KW - landscape context

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85180708283&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3390/d15121188

DO - 10.3390/d15121188

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1424-2818

VL - 15

JO - Diversity

JF - Diversity

IS - 12

M1 - 1188

ER -