Abstract
To study how honey bees utilize forage resources and guide pollination management plans in crops, a multitude of methods have been developed, but most are time consuming, costly, and require specialized skills. Colored pan traps for monitoring activity-density are a simple, efficient, and cost-effective alternative; however, their usefulness for studying honey bees is not well described. We examined if trap color, location within a field, and the presence of managed colonies affected estimates of honey bee activity-density within soybean fields. Soybeans are visited by pollinators but do not require these visits for seed development. Pan traps, especially those colored blue, captured more honey bees when colonies were present. There were no differences in activity-density based on placement of traps within a field nor with increasing distance from colonies. Throughout the season, activity-density in soybeans was constant but tripled after soybean ceased blooming, suggesting spikes in pan trap captures may indicate periods of forage scarcity. Activity-density did not correlate with the population size of worker bees at a site, but did correlate with number of colonies present. We conclude that pan traps can be useful for assessing honey bee activity, particularly for estimating colony presence and identifying times of forage scarcity.
Highlights
The use of colored pan traps is a simple, efficient, and cost-effective technique to quantify insect communities [1,2,3]
Experiment One: Does Honey Bee Activity-Density Vary with Trap Color, the Presence of an Apiary, Bee
All soybeans were planted with a treated seed; Iowa State University (ISU) fields were planted with only a fungicide seed treatment (Fluopyram, ILeVO, Bayer, Pittsburgh, PA, USA), and private fields were planted with a treatment composed of an insecticide and fungicide
Summary
The use of colored pan traps is a simple, efficient, and cost-effective technique to quantify insect communities [1,2,3]. Pan traps (or ‘bee-bowls’) can be a useful tool for monitoring bee communities [4,5,6,7]. There are drawbacks associated with this method that limit the ability of the traps to accurately quantify the community of bees in an area. It is suggested that researchers employ other methods, such as targeted sweep netting, to sample the bee community as an alternative or addition to pan traps [9,14]. Bee communities can arguably be better sampled directly from the flowers that they visit via netting [8,9]; this method has limitations due to labor requirements and variability in researcher netting skills [16].
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