There's been some discussion lately about competition between bee species,
especially honey bees and other bees.  I thought I'd add a little from what
IBRA has been contributing to the debate recently.
 
We organized a scientific symposium on bee conservation in April, and I
summarized for BEE-L one of the poster papers on the possible negative
effects of introducing non-native honey bees to natural areas (in New
Zealand).
 
The symposium has now been written up for the latest issue of Bee World by
Robert Paxton, and this is from his report.
 
"The impact of honey bees on wild bees has generated much heated debate in
beekeeping and more esoteric academic circles alike, and one of the four
sessions at the meeting was entirely devoted to presentations addressing
this issue. Competition between honey bees and wild bees is notoriously
difficult to demonstrate in the field (Roubik, Smithsonian Tropical
Research Institute, Panama), possibly, Thorp (University of California)
suggested, because of the past elimination of those wild bee species most
sensitive to such competition.
 
"However, a view prevailed that honey bees (Buchmann, USDA Tucson), or even
Bombus terrestris (Dafni & Schmida, University of Haifa and University of
Jerusalem), are likely to compete with other bee species under some
situations, and recent empirical evidence has demonstrated a negative
impact of honey bees on the foraging and reproduction of wild bees in
Germany, where honey bees are themselves indigenous.
 
"In a more constructive vein, Sugden et al. suggest that we should aim to
define the conditions under which inter-specific competition exist, and
Corbet's (University of Cambridge) 'competition box' provides a novel and
potentially useful experimental paradigm by which to do so".
 
Proceedings from this meeting will be published jointly by IBRA, The
Linnean Society of London and Academic Press early next year.
 
The next issue of Bee World will have a fascinating review of competition
between honey bees and native bees in Australia.  More than in most other
countries where honey bees have been introduced, beekeepers in Australia
are facing increased calls for the exclusion of their business or hobby
from conservation areas.
 
This debate will not go away, until a lot more discussion and analysis have
taken place.
 
Andrew
 
--
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* From Andrew Matheson, Director, International Bee Research Association *
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