Has anybody counted honeybees in a large sampling area of a large
Raspberry (Rubus ideaus) crop relative to temperature over a number
of seasons?
 
I am aware of  papers that give details of honeybee counts relative to time of
day opn a variety of crops.  Several of these give linear
regression analysis of foraging relative to temperature that indicates a
constant increase in foraging between 10 and 30 C but most of these
are based on counts within a limited  area over a limited time.
 
Some work that I undertook over 5 years seems to indicate that
honeybee numbers  increase to about 22 C (ish) then fall off.  There also
seems to be multiple modes.
 
A linear regression analysis of this data  produces a broadly  similar slope to
other workers mentioned above but with a poor correlation coefficient.
 
As a beekeeper I can come up with a number of  explanations of my findings
but would like to confer with anyone who has taken counts in a large
sampling area of a large crop, any crop because one of the answers
could lie here.
 
Keith
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