Bees are generally associated with flowering meadows rather than with dense forests.
Bees are generally associated with flowering meadows rather than with dense forests. Woodland, however, is considered the original habitat of the western honeybee (Apis mellifera), as it offers nesting sites in the form of tree cavities. Researchers at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) have now investigated the extent to which contemporary deciduous forests are suitable as foraging habitats for the busy insects.
For this purpose, Benjamin Rutschmann and Patrick Kohl installed twelve normally-sized honeybee colonies in observation hives across the Steigerwald – the respective proportion of forest in the surroundings varied for each bee colony. The two scientists conduct research at JMU in the Chair of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology (Zoology III), which is headed by Professor Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter. The latter was also involved in the study, which has now appeared in the Journal of Applied Ecology.
Eavesdropping on Bee Dances
Honeybees communicate via the so-called waggle dance. The team analyzed a total of 2022 of these dances video recorded across the bees’ main foraging season, from March to August. Because the bees communicate the approximate location of a food source to their conspecifics during these dances, the scientist were able to draw conclusions about foraging distances and habitat preferences. The surprising result was that the bees used the forest far less than expected based on its contribution to landcover. Colonies that lived deep in the forest often had to travel long distances to find food.
Read more at University of Würzburg
Photo Credit: scw1217 via Pixabay
