Nutritional composition of honey bee food stores vary with floral composition.

ABSTRACT: Sufficiently diverse and abundant resources are essential for generalist consumers, and form an important part of a suite of conservation strategies for pollinators. Honey bees are generalist foragers and are dependent on diverse forage to adequately meet their nutritional needs. Through analysis of stored pollen (bee bread) samples obtained from 26 honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) hives across NW-England, we quantified bee bread nutritional content and the plant species that produced these stores from pollen. Protein was the most abundant nutrient by mass (63%), followed by carbohydrates (26%). Protein and lipid content (but not carbohydrate) contributed significantly to ordinations of floral diversity, linking dietary quality with forage composition. DNA sequencing of the ITS2 region of the

SUBMITTER: Donkersley P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5681600 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature