Evaluating competition between managed and wild bees in a semi-urban agricultural landscape

Commodities

• Animal Products: honey

Practices

• Crop Production: beekeeping, pollination, pollinator habitat, pollinator health

The decline of wild bee populations is a critical concern that
threatens the sustainability of pollination services across many
landscapes. Wild bee communities are strongly affected by land
management practices and habitat fragmentation, but also by
competition with non native species, including honeybees.
Although use of managed honeybee hives is important for
optimizing production in various agricultural systems,
hive-keeping is also growing as a recreational pursuit among
hobbyists and homeowners, which may increase regional competitive
pressures on wild bee populations for access to limited pollen
resources. Consequently, there is a need to understand how
honeybees interact with wild bees, and the consequences of such
interactions for both managed honeybees and wild bees. Strong
competition between honeybees and wild bees could result in
population declines of wild bee assemblages, and a corresponding
loss of natural pollination services. Here, we ask whether (and
to what extent) managed honeybees compete with wild bees,
evaluating effects of species overlap on patterns of resource use
and biodiversity in the Colorado Front Range region. Our project
will establish a collaboration between researchers, growers, and
hive managers to examine patterns of floral visitation and nest
site use by wild bees in the presence and absence of honeybee
hives using an experimental framework that varies cropping system
as well as timing, duration, and density of honeybee hive
deployment. Project results will help to inform whether there is
evidence of ecologically important overlap in the foraging and
habitat use patterns of multiple wild bee taxa and honeybees, and
how parameters of hive management (hive density) influence this
overlap. Project results will be disseminated to agricultural
stakeholders via multiple pathways including (1) publishing new
extension bulletins on honeybee competition, (2) integrating
project data into educational modules for regional Native Plant
Master, Master Gardener, and Pollinator Watch extension programs,
and (3) stakeholder engagement workshops with growers,
professional hive managers, and hobbyists to interpret and
discuss results in the context of current hive management
tactics. We will employ summative assessments to evaluate project
effectiveness by monitoring change over time in honeybee
densities across semi-urban agricultural landscapes, analysis of
informal surveys (both course survey and WSARE survey tools),
text analysis of grower narratives, and web analytics to evaluate
use of educational products. We expect our research, educational
products, and summative assessments to result in co-produced
policy recommendations in our region regarding future
conservation efforts for wild bee populations. 

The overarching goal of this project is to
quantify the impacts of backyard beekeeping and small-scale
commercial beekeeping on patterns of foraging and nesting by wild
bee communities, and make specific recommendations to natural
resource managers, beekeepers (hobbyist and professional), and
the general public on best practices for wild bee conservation.
To this end, we address the following research and educational
objectives: 

Research
objectives:

1. Quantify patterns of floral visitation - Does
the presence of honeybees reduce wild bee visitation to
flowers? 

2. Assess nest site use - Does the presence of
honeybees reduce the probability of nest site use by wild bees?

3. Test whether wild bees affect honeybee health and
productivity - Do wild bees affect honeybee health and
productivity?

4. Model outcomes for wild bees - What are the
long-term prospects for wild bee populations in the presence of
honeybee colonies?

Educational
objectives:

5. Improve existing programmatic content -
Incorporate new modules on pollinator management into existing
content in popular extension programs

6. Produce new extension fact sheets - develop
new semi-technical brief for backyard beekeepers and
conservation-minded members of the general public

7. Stakeholder workshops - engage beekeepers and
pollinator conservation groups in workshops to develop
relationships, policy recommendations, and long-term research
needs