The honey bee (Apis mellifera) is important both ecologically, as a generalist pollinator, and economically by pollinating our crops and producing honey. Honey bees use plants for foraging for pollen and nectar, which together constitute their entire diet. Yet, as flowering times of plants vary during the summer, so do the floral resources available. Honey bees are known to be selective for their food sources. Thus, their specificity in plant choices could vary according to the availability of flower sources, showing a differing usage of plant diversity in different timepoints. Alternatively, the honey bees selectivity to fulfill their nutrient needs could lead to a constant usage of diversity. The taxonomic origin of the plant DNA found in honey can be identified and used to investigate the plant taxa the bees have collected nectar and pollen from. This study asks whether the diversity of plants which honey bees use varies during summer (June, July, and August). I used two diversity indices as response variables: 1) the Shannon-Wiener diversity index and 2) the number of plant genera identified in the DNA in the honey. I used data gathered from 41 hives from 14 Finnish beekeepers. An ANOVA test revealed no significant difference among the three timepoints in either response variable, indicating honey bees select a constant diversity of plants throughout the season. The result suggest that different plants can fulfill honey bees’ requirements at different parts of the summer. Honey bees are generalists, but selective, producing a relatively constant usage of plants throughout the season.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-226017 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Lundberg, Eli |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för ekologi, miljö och geovetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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