POLLINATION: WILD BEES AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE HONEYBEE ?

Migration restrictions against honeybee colonies from Varroa infected regions raised the question of sufficient supply of colonies for fruit tree pollination and the search for ways out of the problem.
The ability of wild bees to complement or even substitute the honeybees was therefore investigated.

Though their population was very small in the orchards, their flower visiting and pollen gathering habits make the individual solitary bees efficient pollinators: they regularly touched the stigmas on each flower visited – in contrast to the honeybees, which did so only on about one third of the flowers visited.
Solitary bees obviously carried more pollen on their body hairs, and viability of this pollen tended to be better.
They always carried pollen of different varieties on their body hairs.

Though observations in the open showed a tendency of honeybees to prefer certain varieties, pollen of other varieties was also identified on every honeybee examined by scanning electron microscopy.
The value of wild bees as pollinators of fruit trees is discussed.

Fruit Set and Development, XXI IHC

M. Klug, G. Bünemann

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1983.139.7