Floral resource pulse decreases bumble bee foraging trip duration in central <scp>W</scp>isconsin agroecosystem

Hemberger, Jeremy; Gratton, Claudio

doi:10.1111/een.12516

Cited by 20 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Mass‐flowering floral displays, including crops such as canola and sunflower, are known to be important foraging resources for eusocial pollinators, especially bumble bees (Hemberger & Gratton, 2018; Rundlöf et al, 2014; Westphal et al, 2009). We found that large Phacelia flower plantings were used by foraging bumble bees in this agricultural landscape.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Floral resource continuity boosts bumble bee colony performance relative to variable floral resources

Hemberger

Witynski

Gratton

2022

Ecological Entomology

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Centuries of landscape changes associated with agriculture have dramatically reduced the amount and increased the temporal variability of the floral resources that support key pollinating insects such as bumble bees. Adapting to these novel resource conditions is important to ensure the persistence of bumble bee species. While several species appear to be in decline in modern agricultural landscapes, others have thrived, suggesting adaptation to exploit highly variable floral resources. Bombus impatiens, the common eastern bumble bee, is a prime example of such a species. We designed an experiment to compare how free‐foraging colonies of B. impatiens performed adjacent to areas with either temporally continuous or variable (pulsed) patches of purple tansy (Phacelia tanacetifolia) plantings. We found that colonies in Phacelia landscapes grew faster, had gained more mass, and produced more gynes than did colonies in reference landscapes with no Phacelia. Comparing colony responses between pulsed and continuous flowering resources showed that total mass gain at the end of the experiment was greater with continuous flowering resources. In contrast, colony growth rate and total gyne production were comparable for colonies adjacent to Phacelia plantings that were continuous versus pulsed. While low in statistical replication, given the scale of the experimental manipulation, our experiment shows that although B. impatiens colonies can exploit periods of resource discontinuity and gain mass, these continuously available floral resources appear important for colony growth and benefit gyne production.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Floral resource continuity boosts bumble bee colony performance relative to variable floral resources

Hemberger

Witynski

Gratton

2022

Ecological Entomology

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“…This relative benefit may explain why a land cover that is described as pollinator-supportive in one region is not necessarily found to be pollinator-supportive in another region. For example, while intensive row crop monocultures are considered to be detrimental to pollinators in some contexts [6,15], mass-blooming monocultural crops can provide short-term flowering pulses [20,21], and thus the effect on pollinator populations depends upon overall landscape composition [22]. Likewise, agricultural management approaches that integrate flowering plants into the crop rows or field margins either by planting or by allowing volunteer plants to grow, can increase the pollinator attractiveness of farms [23].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grassy–herbaceous land moderates regional climate effects on honey bee colonies in the Northcentral US

Quinlan

Sponsler

Gaines-Day

et al. 2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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The lack of seasonally sustained floral resources (i.e., pollen and nectar) is considered a primary global threat to pollinator health. However, the ability to predict the abundance of flowering resources for pollinators based upon climate, weather, and land cover is difficult due to insufficient monitoring over adequate spatial and temporal scales. Here we use spatiotemporally distributed honey bee hive scales that continuously measure hive weights as a standardized method to assess nectar intake. We analyze late summer colony weight gain as the response variable in a random forest regression model to determine the importance of climate, weather, and land cover on honey bee colony productivity. Our random forest model predicted resource acquisition by honey bee colonies with 71% accuracy, highlighting the detrimental effects of warm, wet regions in the Northcentral United States on nectar intake, as well as the detrimental effect of years with high growing degree day accumulation. Our model also predicted that grassy–herbaceous natural land had a positive effect on the summer nectar flow and that large areas of natural grassy–herbaceous land around apiaries can moderate the detrimental effects of warm, wet climates. These patterns characterize multi-scale ecological processes that constrain the quantity and quality of pollinator nutritional resources. That is, broad climate conditions constrain regional floral communities, while land use and weather act to further modify the quantity and quality of pollinator nutritional resources. Observing such broad-scale trends demonstrates the potential for utilizing hive scales to monitor the effects of climate change on landscape-level floral resources for pollinators. The interaction of climate and land use also present an opportunity to manage for climate-resilient landscapes that support pollinators through abundant floral resources under climate change.

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“…and optical tags RFID uses smaller tags than those for radar, but tags must be read by readers within a subcentimeter range (Reynolds and Riley 2002, Silcox et al 2011, Nunes-Silva et al 2018, making it infeasible for continual long-range detection like radar tracking. It has most successfully been used to follow workers entering and leaving captive nests or feeders (Gill et al 2012, Hemberger and Gratton 2018, Malfi et al 2018 but not for direct observations across a large landscape array. For example, it can be used to measure time away from a colony for many individuals, yielding an estimate of the time spent foraging and a proxy for landscape-scale foraging effort (Hemberger and Gratton 2018; for an example without RFID, see Westphal et al, 2006) and colony-wide activity patterns and potential task allocation (Kerr et al 2019).…”

Section: Radio-frequency Identification (Rfid)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We encourage practitioners to use available methods to investigate differences between individuals, castes, age classes, body sizes, or differing contexts. More recent studies have begun to reveal the ontogeny of forager flight a n d d i f f e r e n c e s b e t w e e n i n d i v i d u a l s (Woodgate et al 2016), as well as colonylevel variability in foraging effort as the resource landscape changes (Hemberger andGratton 2018, Pope andJha 2018). Continued efforts are likely to reveal more about the plasticity and flexibility of movement among life stages, allowing us to understand the impacts of habitat fragmentation, agrochemical exposure, changing climate, and resource availability on the movement patterns and population viability of bumble bees.…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A review of methods for the study of bumble bee movement

Mola

Williams

2019

Apidologie

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Understanding animal movement is critical for conservation planning, habitat management, and ecological study. However, our understanding is often limited by methodological constraints. These limitations can be especially problematic in the study of ecologically and economically important pollinators like bumble bees, where several aspects of their biology limit the feasibility of landscape-scale studies. We review the methods available for the study of bumble bee movement ecology, discussing common limitations and tradeoffs among several frequent data sources. We provide recommendations on appropriate use for different life stages and castes, emphasizing where recent methodological advances can help reveal key components of understudied parts of the bumble bee life cycle such as queen movement and dispersal. We emphasize that there is no one correct method and encourage researchers planning studies to carefully consider the data requirements to best address questions of interest. foraging / dispersal / mark-recapture / radio-tracking / sibship assignment Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (

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Floral resource pulse decreases bumble bee foraging trip duration in central Wisconsin agroecosystem

Cited by 20 publications

References 59 publications

Floral resource continuity boosts bumble bee colony performance relative to variable floral resources

Floral resource continuity boosts bumble bee colony performance relative to variable floral resources

Grassy–herbaceous land moderates regional climate effects on honey bee colonies in the Northcentral US

A review of methods for the study of bumble bee movement

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