Wild Bees Enhance Honey Bees' Pollination of Hybrid Sunflower

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 103; no. 37; pp. 13890 - 13895
• Main Authors: Greenleaf, Sarah S., Kremen, Claire
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States National Academy of Sciences 12.09.2006; National Acad Sciences
• Series: From the Cover
• Subjects: Animals; Apidae; Apis mellifera; Bees - physiology; Biological Sciences; Chimera - physiology; Conservation of Natural Resources; Crop production; Crops, Agricultural - economics; Helianthus; Helianthus - growth & development; Helianthus - physiology; Honey; Honey bees; Insect behavior; Insect colonies; Insect morphology; Insect pests; Insect pollination; Pollen; Pollination; Sunflowers
• ISSN: 0027-8424; 1091-6490
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0600929103

Pollinators are required for producig 15-30% of the human food supply, and farmers rely on managed honey bees throughout the world to provide these services. Yet honey bees are not always the most efficint pollinators of all crops and are declining in various parts of the world. Crop pollination shortages are becoming increasingly common. We found that behavioral interactions between wild and honey bees increase the pollination efficincy of honey bees on hybrid sunflower up to 5-fold, effectively doubling honey bee pollination services on the average field. These indirect contributions caused by interspeciic interactions between wild and honey bees were more than five times more important than the contributions wild bees make to sunflower pollination directly. Both proximity to natural habitat and crop planting practices were significantly correlated with pollination services provided directly and indirectly by wild bees. Our results suggest that conserving wild habitat at the landscape scale and altering selected farm management techniques could increase hybrid sunflower production. These findings also demonstrate the economic importance of interspeciic interactions for ecosystem services and suggest that protecting wild bee populations can help buffer the human food supply from honey bee shortages.