Abstract
Knowledge about floral resources is essential for bee management and conservation. Pollen analysis of honey is the most traditional method for determining the nectar resources of a bee species. However, the collection of honey samples is difficult in cavity-nesting natural stingless bee colonies. Furthermore, it is detrimental to the wild bee’s colony and may threaten their survivability. We analyzed adhered body surface pollen of incoming nectar foragers (which were smeared incidentally during nectar foraging) as an alternative method to determine nectariferous flora of Tetragonula iridipennis in West Bengal, India. By this method, we have identified 75 pollen types. The number of obtained pollen types was lower in the human-altered habitats of Midnapore city (44 pollen types) than the semi-natural habitats of Garhbeta (71 pollen types). Excluding a few pollen types of non-nectariferous plants, most of the pollen types came from nectariferous plants of both crop and non-crop species. Non-crop flowering plants (viz. Ailanthus excelsa, Borassus flabellifer, Eucalyptus tereticornis, Lannea coromandelica, Peltophorum pterocarpum, and Tectona grandis) provided a significant amount of nectar to the bee species and, therefore, play an important role in the conservation of the bee species.
Highlights
Stingless bees form a monophyletic tribe of corbiculate bees with a few hundred recognized species of about 60 genera (Rasmussen & Cameron, 2010)
A few pollen types viz. Capparis zeylanica, Chenopodium album, Holoptelea integrifolia, Luffa aegyptiaca, Ricinus communis, Solanum sisymbriifolium, Streblus asper, and Trema orientalis came from non-nectariferous plants
If we see the picture round the year, frequent pollen types obtained in semi-natural areas of Garhbeta were Eucalyptus tereticornis (14.51%), Brassica juncea (11.34%), Tectona grandis (9.62%), Peltophorum pterocarpum (7.12%), Borassus flabellifer (3.71%), Lannea coromandelica (3.26%), and Delonix regia (3.22%) (Table 2)
Summary
Stingless bees form a monophyletic tribe of corbiculate bees with a few hundred recognized species of about 60 genera (Rasmussen & Cameron, 2010). They are highly eusocial bees that inhabit the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. Stingless bees form perennial colonies with a single queen, a few hundred to several thousand workers, and a few hundred males (Michener, 2007). To sustain their colony, foragers collect nectar, pollen, resin, mud, sap, honeydew, animal protein, fungal spores for nutrition, or nestbuilding materials (Roubik, 1989; Eltz et al, 2002). Stingless bees management is considered an effective way to enhance crop yield via increasing pollination
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