Why honeybees are poor pollinators of a mass-flowering plant: Experimental support for the low pollen quality hypothesis.

ABSTRACT:

Premise

Honeybees dominate the flower-visitor assemblages of many plant species, yet their efficiency in terms of the quality of pollen delivered to stigmas is largely unknown. We investigated why honeybees are poor pollinators of Aloe ferox, a self-incompatible succulent treelet with large numbers of flowers. Honeybees are very frequent visitors to flowers of this species, yet contribute very little to seed production.

Methods

We assessed pollen loads on honeybees, studied their visitation behavior, selectively excluded birds from plants to determine direct effects of bees on pollen deposition, seed set, and ovule abortion, and used a novel "split-pollinator" method to test whether honeybees deposit mainly low-quality self pollen. For the latter, we captured honeybees, and

SUBMITTER: Diller C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9545086 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature