Bee Fauna in and Around Kakum National Park

Abstract

Even though several ecological studies on various fauna studies have been carried out in the Kakum National Park, record on the bee fauna is lacking in spite of the fact that bees are one of the most economically important insects. Bees constitute 60%-70% of all insect pollinators. This research was set out to assess the bee fauna within three landscapes (primary forest, secondary forest and agricultural land- in and around the Kakum National Park of Ghana. Pan traps (blue, white and yellow) were designed to collect bees at the canopies of forest trees as well as lower vegetation levels for thirteen months. Over 57 bee species belonging to three families (Apidae, Halictidae and Megachilidae) were identified from a total of 1, 288 bee specimens collected from the three landscapes. These were categorized into 31 genera. Significant differences in total abundance were recorded among the stingless bee and other bee species within the landscapes. In terms of sociality, variations occurred in the different landscapes with bees exhibiting four levels of sociality (parasitic, eusocial, quasisocial and solitary). Both long and short tongued bees were present in all the three landscapes.