Identification of a plant’s pollen components can be used to establish its geographical provenance, while also providing insights into the diet and foraging preferences of the honeybee (Apis mellifera L.). The diversity and amount of pollen rep...
Gustatory perception in honeybees is a key determinant of foraging decisions and pollen source selection. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying this sensory discrimination remain poorly understood. To investigate these mechanisms during the co...
Several honeybee species can coexist within a given geographical region; however, their interactions and the extent to which their foraging niches overlap remain poorly understood. To address this gap, we assessed niche overlap among four honeybee sp...
Pollen acts as both a gametophyte for plant reproduction and a vital nutrient source for bees. Adult honey bees (Apis mellifera) mix pollen with nectar, enzymes, and microbes to create ‘bee bread’, diverting pollen from plant reproduction...
Foraging is a physiologically demanding behavior in honey bees, requiring substantial energy expenditure and continuous physiological adaptation. To investigate the molecular responses of hemolymph during foraging, pollen-foraging workers returning f...
Cadmium (Cd) is a heavy metal present in pollen and nectar that affects pollinator attributes. Honey bees possess the ability to eliminate Cd from honey. Consequently, the concentration of Cd in pollen, rather than nectar, is the critical factor infl...
The study of flower visitor behavior and pollen transport dynamics within and between plants can be of great importance, especially for threatened or rare plant species. In this work, we aim to assess the flower visitor assemblage of the Madeiran end...
Celonites kozlovi Kostylev, 1935, and C. sibiricus Gusenleitner, 2007, coexist in semi-deserts of the Altai Mountains. The trophic relationships of these pollen wasp species to flowers are largely unknown. We observed the flower visits and behav...
Crop fidelity is a desirable trait for managed pollinators and is influenced by factors like competing forage sources and colony knowledge of the surrounding environment. In European honey bees (Apis mellifera L.), colonies deployed when the crop is...
Pollen is important not only for pollination and fertilization of plants, but also for colony development of bee pollinators. Anther dehiscence determines the available pollen that can be collected by foragers. In China, honeybees and bumblebees are...
Within the framework of animal learning theory, information transfer refers to the generalization or transmission of acquired knowledge to novel situations, individuals, or environments. In pollinators, this process is critical for adaptive foraging...
The availability of floral resources is crucial for honey bee colonies because it allows them to obtain protein from pollen and carbohydrates from nectar; typically, they consume these nutrients in the form of bee bread, which has undergone fermentat...
Sanguisorba dodecandra Moretti is an endemic plant of the Alps of the Lombardy region (Northern Italy). Differently from most endemic species, this plant grows in diverse environments, and it is often very abundant and a distinctive element of some m...
Pollinator nutritional ecology provides insights into plant–pollinator interactions, coevolution, and the restoration of declining pollinator populations. Bees obtain their protein and lipid nutrient intake from pollen, which is essential for l...
Agricultural landscapes usually provide higher quantities of single-source food, which are noticeably lacking in diversity and might thus have low nutrient value for bumble bee colony development. Here, in this study, we analysed the pollen foraging...
Ornamental nursery plants are both a major agricultural industry in the U.S. and a major feature of the urban and suburban landscape. Interest in their relationship with pollinators is two-fold: the extent to which they provide a nutritional benefit...
Dietary macro-nutrients (i.e., carbohydrates, protein, and fat) are important for bee larval development and, thus, colony health and fitness. To which extent different diets (varying in macro-nutrient composition) affect adult bees and whether they...
Honey bee foragers specializing in nectar, pollen, and water collection differ in their physiological demands and in how the collected resource is transported. Here, we investigated whether physiological and behavioral differences among forager types...
This study investigated the outgoing and pollen-gathering foraging activities of Apis mellifera jemenitica (AMJ) and Apis mellifera carnica (AMC) under a hot-arid environment in the presence of nectar-rich melliferous Ziziphus nummularia flora. The d...
The proboscis extension response (PER) assay revealed the responsiveness of three subspecies of the honeybee Apis mellifera [A. m. jemenitica (AMJ), A. m. carnica (AMC), and A. m. ligustica (AML)] to water and different concentrations (0.00001, 0.000...
We assessed if the commercially reared South American bumblebee Bombus pauloensis forages resources in alfalfa crops by monitoring their colony activity daily. We analyzed the pollen collected by using pollen traps specifically designed for B. pauloe...
Fruit production in many crops depends on pollen transfer by animals, and many self-sterile crops rely on long-distance pollen transfer by animals between different genotypes, i.e., between different cultivars. Foragers such as honeybees may need to...
The contribution of bee forages in the form of nectar, pollen, and propolis to beekeeping development depends on plant species diversity. The data concerning the increase in honey production in southwestern Saudi Arabia, which was unexpected with the...
Honey bee colonies are often subjected to diseases, nutrition quality, temperature and other stresses depending on environmental and climatic conditions. As a result of malnutrition, the level of Vg protein decreases, leading to overwintering losses....
The function of pollen as a reward for foraging bees is little understood, though there is evidence to suggest that it can reinforce associations with visual and olfactory floral cues. Foraging bees do not feed on pollen, thus one could argue that it...
Performance of Osmia bicornis larvae fed on six diets with different pollen species composition (one wild collected by foraging adults), each with known levels of nine essential amino acids (EAA; leucine, lysine, valine, arginine, isoleucine, phenyla...
Vespa velutina is an invasive species that exhibits flexible social behavior, which may have contributed to its introduction in several European countries. It is important to understand its behavior in order to combat the effects of its introduction...
Pollination rates in hybrid carrot crops remain limited after introduction of honey bee hives. In this study, honey bee foraging behaviour was observed in commercial hybrid carrot seed crops. Significantly more visits were made to male-fertile (MF) r...
Insect crop visitations do not necessarily translate to carriage or transfer of pollen. To evaluate the potential of the various insects visiting hybrid carrot flowers to facilitate pollen transfer, this study examines insect visitation rates to hybr...
Pollinators are being threatened globally by urbanisation and agricultural intensification, driven by a growing human population. Understanding these impacts on landscapes and pollinators is critical to ensuring a robust pollination system. Remote se...
The flowers of plants of the genus Ludwigia are an important source of food for several species of bees. In the current study, we conducted an experiment with the aim to describe the reproductive biology and phenology of L. nervosa; to identify the s...
In this paper, we show the results of investigating the presence of organochlorine pesticides in honey and pollen samples from managed colonies of the honey bee, Apis mellifera L. and of the stingless bee Scaptotrigona mexicana Guérin. Three c...
A present goal of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is to manage land in agricultural landscapes to increase pollinator abundance and diversity. CP42, or the pollinator seed mix, is planted and managed to support foraging pollinators with bloomi...
With the availability of various plants in bloom simultaneously, honey bees prefer to collect some pollen types over others. To better understand pollen’s role as a reward for workers, we compared the digestibility and nutritional value of two pollen...
Bee pollen loads generally have a homogeneous and monospecific pollen content and assume a typical form and color, due to the typical bee foraging habits, thus having a typical composition related to the botanical origin. The present study aims to ch...
In the subtropics, agricultural activities such as beekeeping are greatly influenced by environmental challenges. In the desert of Central Arabia, honeybees forage on limited prairies that are affected by adverse weather conditions. Bee colonies redu...
Traits such as defense and foraging in social insects depend on the coordinated division of labor (DOL) among workers. However, several aspects of the molecular mechanisms driving behavioral specialization for these tasks remain incompletely characte...
During recent decades, bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) have continuously expanded their range in the Mediterranean climate regions of Israel. To assess their potential effects on local bee communities, we monitored their diurnal and seasonal activity...
The effects of sublethal pesticide exposure on queen emergence and virus titers were examined. Queen rearing colonies were fed pollen with chlorpyrifos (CPF) alone (pollen-1) and with CPF and the fungicide Pristine® (pollen-2). Fewer queens emerged w...
Colony monitoring devices used to track and assess the health status of honey bees are becoming more widely available and used by both beekeepers and researchers. These devices monitor parameters relevant to colony health at frequent intervals, often...
Gamma irradiation is known to inactivate various pathogens that negatively affect honey bee health. Bee pathogens, such as Deformed wing virus (DWV) and Nosema spp., have a deleterious impact on foraging activities and bee survival, and have been det...
The deficiency of pollen grains for ovule fertilization can be the main factor limiting plant reproduction and fitness. Because of the ongoing global changes, such as biodiversity loss and landscape fragmentation, a better knowledge of the prevalence...
Pollen is a major source of proteins and lipids for bumblebees. The nutritional content of pollen may differ from source plants, ultimately affecting colony development. This study investigated the foraging preferences of Bombus terrestris in regard...
Excessive pollen harvesting by bees can compromise the reproductive success of plants. Plants have therefore evolved different morphological structures and floral cues to narrow the spectrum of pollen feeding visitors. Among “filtering” m...
We investigated the bacterial community of bee bread and bee pollen samples using an approach through 16 s rRNA high-throughput sequencing. The results revealed a higher bacterial diversity in bee bread than in bee pollen as depicted in taxonomic pro...
The lack of pollinators in the oil tree peony field was a serious problem for the seed yield. In the preliminary studies, we found that the seed rate of oil tree peonies was significantly improved by supplementing bees during the flowering stages in...
Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) is a vital global forage crop. Transgenic technology promises enhanced yield and quality, but requires rigorous environmental risk assessment, particularly regarding pollen-mediated gene flow, for which standardized proto...
Morphologically complex flowers are characterized by bilateral symmetry, tube-like shapes, deep corolla tubes, fused petals, and/or poricidal anthers, all of which constrain the access of insect visitors to floral nectar and pollen rewards. Only a su...
Domestic gardens supply pollinators with valuable habitats, but the risk of exposure to pesticides has been little investigated. Artificial nesting shelters of a red mason bee species (Osmia bicornis) were placed in two suburban gardens and two comme...
Nosema disease is a major disease of honey bees caused by two species of microsporidia, Nosema apis and N. ceranae. Current control involves using antibiotics, which is undesirable because of possible antibiotic resistance and contamination. In this...
of 3