By Richard B. Primack
The hoary mountain mint had “prettily purple-spotted flowers . . . swarming with great wasps of different kinds, and bees.” Henry David Thoreau in his Journal.
Many local governments are considering regulations to restrict honey bee (Apis mellifera) hives due to concerns that they are outcompeting native flower visitors. To gather information on this topic, and help determine if these concerns are well founded, we observed insect visitation to 391 native and non-native plant species in Newton, Massachusetts (USA), a Boston suburb.
We found that:
1. Honey bees and native bees, including bumblebees and solitary bees, visit a wide variety of cultivated, native, adventive, and pollinator garden plants.
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| Photo 1. Honey bee covered with pollen. |
2. Cultivated plants receive more overall visits than wild plant species, but the most visited plants are often wild plant species with mixed visitation by honey bees and native pollinators.
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| Photo 2. Hunting wasp visiting boneset flowers. |
3. Many plant species, particularly cultivated plants, receive few or no flower visitors.
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| Photo 3. A huge cherry tree in flower with almost no flower visitors. |
These findings suggest that, at least at this suburban location, floral resources are sufficient to allow coexistence between honey bees, bumblebees, other native bees, and other insects. Habitat protection and reduction in herbicide and pesticide use might be a more effective strategy for protecting native flower visiting insects.
These results were published in Biological Conservation: LINK
