Pollination patterns of honey bees

Honey bees were among the most abundant species of pollinators that I observed. Their pollination patterns are very interesting; unlike most pollinators that visit multiple flowers at a time, honey bees seem to stay at the same plant until its all depleted of easily available source of nectar before moving to another plant. Honey bees usually stay at the same plant for quite a while (2 to 5 mins) before moving to another. This is very different from pollinators such as butterflies and dragonflies; which stays on one plant for a short period of time (30 sec to 1 min). This might be due to the fact that the honey bees stay at the same plant in order to save as much energy as possible-- because moving to a new plan cost energy. Furthermore, it might also be due to the fact that honey bees have developed a more effective technique of collecting nectar by trying to acquire all the easily accessible nectar before moving to the next plant.

References:
CEBOTARI, V., BUZU, I., GLIGA, O., POSTOLACHI, O., & GRANCIUC, N. (2017). ESTIMATION OF THE EFFICIENCY OF POLLINATION BY BEES OF SUNFLOWER CULTURE FOR HYBRID SEED PRODUCTION. Scientific Papers: Series D, Animal Science - The International Session Of Scientific Communications Of The Faculty Of Animal Science, 60212-216.

Miller-Struttmann, Nicole E., David Heise, Johannes Schul, Jennifer C. Geib, and Candace Galen. 2017. "Flight of the bumble bee: Buzzes predict pollination services." Plos ONE 12, no. 6: 1-14. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed December 11, 2017).

Posted on December 11, 2017 07:24 AM by jswoosh89