Native habitat mitigates feast-famine conditions faced by honey bees in an agricultural landscape.

ABSTRACT: Intensive agriculture can contribute to pollinator decline, exemplified by alarmingly high annual losses of honey bee colonies in regions dominated by annual crops (e.g., midwestern United States). As more natural or seminatural landscapes are transformed into monocultures, there is growing concern over current and future impacts on pollinators. To forecast how landscape simplification can affect bees, we conducted a replicated, longitudinal assessment of honey bee colony growth and nutritional health in an intensively farmed region where much of the landscape is devoted to production of corn and soybeans. Surprisingly, colonies adjacent to soybean fields surrounded by more cultivated land grew more during midseason than those in areas of lower cultivation. Regardless of the landscape surr

SUBMITTER: Dolezal AG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6911205 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature