Urbanisation is associated with reduced Nosema sp. infection, higher colony strength and higher richness of foraged poll
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Apidologie * The Author(s), 2020 DOI: 10.1007/s13592-020-00758-1
Urbanisation is associated with reduced Nosema sp. infection, higher colony strength and higher richness of foraged pollen in honeybees Ash E. SAMUELSON1 , Richard J. GILL2 , Ellouise LEADBEATER1 1
School of Biological Sciences, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, UK Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus, Ascot, UK
2
Received 11 August 2019 – Revised 12 February 2020 – Accepted 26 February 2020
Abstract – Bees are vital pollinators, but are faced with numerous threats that include loss of floral resources and emerging parasites amongst others. Urbanisation is a rapidly expanding driver of land-use change that may interact with these two major threats to bees. Here we investigated effects of urbanisation on food store quality and colony health in honeybees (Apis mellifera ) by sampling 51 hives in four different land-use categories: urban, suburban, rural open and rural wooded during two seasons (spring and autumn). We found positive effects of urban land use on colony strength and richness of stored pollen morphotypes, alongside lower late-season Nosema sp. infection in urban and suburban colonies. Our results reveal that honeybees exhibit lower colony performance in strength in rural areas, adding to the growing evidence that modern agricultural landscapes can constitute poor habitat for insect pollinators. urbanisation / Nosema spp. / Varroa destructor / pollen foraging / colony strength
1. INTRODUCTION Honeybees (Apis mellifera L.) pollinate a significant proportion of the world’s crops and wild plants (Grünewald 2010). Therefore, reports of environmental threats to honeybees have generated concern regarding provision of pollination services, particularly as demand for pollination increases (Aizen and Harder 2009). Several threats to honeybee stocks have been implicated, including habitat loss and the associated lack of forage (Couvillon et al. 2014b; Alaux et al. 2017), Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13592-020-00758-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Corresponding author: A. Samuelson, [email protected] Manuscript editor: Cedric Alaux
parasites and disease (Brosi et al. 2017), and environmental contaminants such as pesticides (Henry et al. 2012; Wood and Goulson 2017). While numbers of managed hives in the UK (Alton and Ratnieks 2013) and some parts of Europe (Potts et al. 2010; Breeze et al. 2014) have declined in recent decades, urban areas may be an exception due largely to an increase in popularity of urban beekeeping (Alton and Ratnieks 2013; Lorenz and Stark 2015). In London, the number of beekeepers rose from 464 to 1237 between 2008 and 2013 and the number of hives doubled to over 3500 (Alton and Ratnieks 2013), while in Berlin, the number of beekeepers increased by 53% and hives by 44% between 2006 and 2012 (Lorenz and Stark 2015). At the same time, urban areas are ex
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