Hi all
I have been following this research for several years. In my view, they went into with the aim to prove that wild bees are just as important, or even more important for the pollination of apples in NY state.
NY state is third in apple production and growers have always brought honey bees into the orchards in spring. My first beekeeping job was to move bees into apples, by hand, in sets of two hives per drop. We move over 1000 using small trucks which held 32 to a load.
So, it is surprising to me that Danforth et al makes the claim that honey bees are not needed for pollinating apples. They say:
[quote material follows, for review purposes only]
• We assessed pollinator populations and harvest seed set on commercial apple farms.
• More diverse and abundant wild bee communities led to higher harvest seed set.
• Harvest seed set was not impacted by increased abundances of honey bees.
We found no relationship between honey bee abundance and seed set ... Similarly, pollination limitation decreased significantly with increasing wild bee species richness and marginally decreased with wild bee species abundance; but had no relationship with honey bee abundance.
Although wild bee species richness and abundance were important predictors of seed set in apple, greater abundances of honey bees did not lead to an increase in the number of seeds per fruit.
Our results, along with studies from other crops around the globe, suggest that increasing applications of honey bees will not compensate for losses of wild pollinators.
Honey bees were widely cited as essential pollinators for apples based on limited quantitative data on their actual contribution (McGregor, 1976). However, with honey bees increasingly costly to rent and, for some crops, increasingly difficult to obtain, it is critical that we have a better understanding of the actual contribution of honey bees and wild (native) bees in pollinator-dependent crop systems.
Pollination services for apple are dependent on diverse wild bee communities
Eleanor J. Blitzer, Jason Gibbs, Mia G. Park, Bryan N. Danforth
Department of Entomology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment Volume 221, 1 April 2016
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