Honey bees ( Apis mellifera ) visiting flowers of yellow melon ( Cucumis melo ) using different number of hives

Abstract

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) pollinate melon (Cucumis melo) and improve production and quality of fruits. However, little is known about bee behavior and number of hives

Resource Collection by Honeybees (Apis mellifera) on Yellow Melon (Cucumis melo) Flowers

“…As already demonstrated (Ribeiro et al, 2015), honeybees in fact do prefer HF, regardless of the number of hives in the melon crop area, and this is probably due to the large concentration of nectar in those flowers . These authors found from 3 to almost 5 times larger N amounts in HF than in MF throughout the day, and they concluded this was the reason why the first ones were more attractive for the bees.…”

“…However, as described previously (Ribeiro et al, 2015), in areas with 3 hives (or 6/ha) there is a greater competition by resources and the production of commercial fruits is not the best. Therefore, although there was found a larger number of bees collecting resources (as found in this work), probably they were getting a smaller amount of them and the pollination process could be affected.…”

“…All areas were subjected to the same soil preparation and fertilization, drip irrigation system, use of mulching and native vegetation in the surroundings. The same areas and crops described in the work of Ribeiro et al (2015) were used.…”

“…An example is melon (Cucumis melo), which depends entirely on pollinating agents for fruit production (Giannini et al, 2015b). Honeybees visit the male and hermaphrodite flowers throughout the day to collect resources, and do have a preference for the hermaphrodite, although most flowers are male Ribeiro et al, 2015). However, there are few detailed studies on the behavior of these bees on flowers.…”

“…In a recent study, Ribeiro et al (2015) found that for commercial fruit production in the regions of Petrolina (state of Pernambuco) and Juazeiro (state of Bahia), the number of bee hives should be 4/ha (and/or four hives per 3,000 melon plants, once the spacing between plants may vary in the areas). Increasing the number of hives increased drastically the number of bees present at flowers.…”