Kontakt: Henrik Smith (CEC), Henrik.Smith@biol.lu.se

Managed bees have gained in popularity as a way to mitigate the ongoing pollination crisis, both as a general approach and to benefit crop pollination. However, there is also a concern that honey bees may compete with wild bees, thus compromising both conservation of rare bee species and disrupt plant-pollinator networks with negative consequences for wild plant pollination. This has resulted in suggestions that there should be safe levels or safe distances between honey bee apiaries and habitat important for wild pollinators. However, the evidence supporting the negative impact of honey bees on wild bees is scant and consequences for wild plant pollination virtually unknown. Hence, there is a need for additional evidence. However, it is exceedingly difficult to evaluate this in general field studies, since both honey bees and wild bees will show higher densities in areas with abundant forage resources, thus generating a positive background relationship between honey bee and wild bee densities that may obscure negative effects. Furthermore, the consequences of honey bees on wild bees may be context dependent, such that detrimental effects are only seen in landscapes with scarce flower resources.

In this master thesis project you will collaborate with bee keepers, to evaluate the consequences of honey bees on wild bee abundances, fitness and/or plant-pollinator interaction networks. The scope is to identify safe densities and distances between apiaries and nature conservation areas, such that conflicts between bee keepers and conservationists can be mitigated. You will manipulate honey bee densities, determine consequences for bees using e.g. transects, study fitness of trap-nest breeding bees or study plant-pollinator interaction networks. Depending if your background is in biology or environmental science (or another related field), the scope may differ in terms of what the exact ambitions are. In any case, the expectation is that the result will lead both to a high impact international publication and to recommendation to relevant authorities and organizations engaged in bee keeping.

Uppdaterat: Nina Reistad | 2022-07-06