Abstract

Honeybees might outcompete wild bees by depleting common resources, possibly more so in simplified landscapes where flower-rich habitats have been lost. We tested this by experimentally adding honeybee hives to nine sites while ensuring that ten additional sites were free from hives. The landscape surrounding each geographically separated site either held low (homogeneous landscape) or high (heterogeneous landscape) proportions of semi-natural grassland. Adding honeybees suppressed bumblebee densities in field borders and road verges in homogeneous landscapes whereas no such effect was detected in heterogeneous landscapes. The proportional abundance of bumblebee species with small foraging ranges was lower at honeybee sites than at control sites in heterogeneous landscapes, whereas bumblebee communities in homogeneous landscapes were dominated by a single species with long foraging range irrespective of if honeybees were added or not. We conclude that honeybees can impact bumblebee densities, but that landscape heterogeneity modified this effect.

Keywords

Interspecific competition; Apis mellifera; Bombus; Landscape complexity; Pollinators; Flower resources

Published in

Basic and Applied Ecology
2016, Volume: 17, number: 7, pages: 609-616
Publisher: ELSEVIER GMBH, URBAN & FISCHER VERLAG

SLU Authors

• Lindström, Sandra

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • Lund University
  • The Rural Economy and Agricultural Societies

• Bommarco, Riccardo

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG15 Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss


UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.baae.2016.05.001

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/78332