Floral resources,energetic value and pesticide residues in provisions collected by Osmia bicornis along a gradient of oilseed rape coverage

Abstract

Pollinators in agricultural landscapes are facing global decline and the main pressures include food scarcity and pesticide usage. Intensive agricultural landscapes may provide important food resources for wild pollinators via mass flowering crops. However, these are monofloral, short-term, and may contain pesticide residues. We explored how the landscape composition with a different proportion of oilseed rape (6–65%) around Osmia bicornis nests affects floral diversity, contamination with pesticides, and energetic value of provisions collected by this species of wild bees as food for their offspring. Altogether, the bees collected pollen from 28 plant taxa (6–15 per nest) and provisions were dominated by Brassica napus (6.0–54.2%, median 44.4%, 12 nests), Quercus sp. (1.2–19.4%, median 5.2%, 12 nests), Ranunculus sp. (0.4–42.7%, median 4.7%, 12 nests), Poaceae (1.2–59.9%, median 5.8%, 11 nests) and Acer sp. (0.6–42%, median 18.0%, 8 nests). Residues of 12 pesticides were found in provisions, with acetamiprid, azoxystrobin, boscalid, and dimethoate being the most frequently detected at concentrations up to 1.2, 198.4, 16.9 and 17.8 ng/g (median 0.3, 10.6, 11.3, 4.4 ng/g), respectively. Floral diversity and energetic value of provisions, but not the Pesticide Risk Index depended on landscape structure. Moreover, pollen diversity decreased, and energetic value increased with landscape diversity. Thus, even a structurally simple landscape may provide diverse food for O. bicornis if the nest is located close to a single but resource-diverse patch. Both B. napus and non-crop pollen were correlated with pesticide concentrations.