FLOWER CONSTANCY OF POLLINATING HONEYBEES ON SOME FRUIT TREE SPECIES

Flower constancy of honeybee foragers appeared to be rather different for different crops.
Expressed as the percentage of pollen loads containing not contaminated pollen, fidelity was extremely high (99%) for rape and fairly high (88–90%) for pear but was smaller for apricot (70–85%) and much smaller for apple (60%) and sour cherry (43–53%). Flower constancy of honeybees was influenced by competing plants.
The amount of contamination in mixed loads of pollen was some 2–10% in most cases but in a very few cases surprisingly high values occurred as 20–27% in sour cherry and 30–43% in apple.
Flower constancy can not be fully characterized by the average amount of contaminating pollen in mixed loads only, but the distribution of contaminating pollen loads on the basis of the degree of contamination should also to be taken into account.

Beside the well known competing species some other competing sources were discovered for fruit trees as Ficaria verna for apricot, Lamium purpureum for sour cherry and Capsella bursa–pastoris for pear.

II Workshop on Pollination

P. Benedek, Cs. Nagy

Apple, apricot, competition, mixed pollen loads, pear, rape, sour cherry

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1996.423.7