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Citizen science monitoring reveals links between honeybee health, pesticide exposure and seasonal availability of floral resources.

ABSTRACT: We use a national citizen science monitoring scheme to quantify how agricultural intensification affects honeybee diet breadth (number of plant species). To do this we used DNA metabarcoding to identify the plants present in 527 honey samples collected in 2019 across Great Britain. The species richness of forage plants was negatively correlated with arable cropping area, although this was only found early in the year when the abundance of flowering plants was more limited. Within intensively farmed areas, honeybee diets were dominated by Brassica crops (including oilseed rape). We demonstrate how the structure and complexity of honeybee foraging relationships with plants is negatively affected by the area of arable crops surrounding hives. Using information collected from the beekeepers on the incidence of an economically damaging bee disease (Deformed Wing Virus) we found that the occurrence of this disease increased where bees foraged in agricultural land where there was a high use of foliar insecticides. Understanding impacts of land use on resource availability is fundamental to assessing long-term viability of pollinator populations. These findings highlight the importance of supporting temporally timed resources as mitigation strategies to support wider pollinator population viability.

SUBMITTER: Woodcock BA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9395358 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Citizen science monitoring reveals links between honeybee health, pesticide exposure and seasonal availability of floral resources.

Woodcock Ben A BA Oliver Anna E AE Newbold Lindsay K LK Soon Gweon H H Read Daniel S DS Sayed Ujala U Savage Joanna J Bacon Jim J Upcott Emily E Howell Katherine K Turvey Katharine K Roy David B DB Gloria Pereira M M Sleep Darren D Greenop Arran A Pywell Richard F RF

Scientific reports 20220822 1

We use a national citizen science monitoring scheme to quantify how agricultural intensification affects honeybee diet breadth (number of plant species). To do this we used DNA metabarcoding to identify the plants present in 527 honey samples collected in 2019 across Great Britain. The species richness of forage plants was negatively correlated with arable cropping area, although this was only found early in the year when the abundance of flowering plants was more limited. Within intensively far ...[more]

PMID: 35995928

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Dataset Information

Citizen science monitoring reveals links between honeybee health, pesticide exposure and seasonal availability of floral resources.

Publications

Citizen science monitoring reveals links between honeybee health, pesticide exposure and seasonal availability of floral resources.

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