Abstract
Determining bee flight capacity is crucial for developing management strategies for bee conservation and/or crop pollination and purposes. In this study, we determined the flight distance of the stingless bee Melipona fasciculata using the radiofrequency identification (RFID) technology. For this, we conducted two translocation experiments using workers equipped with RFID microsensors: (1) release of bees at seven distances between 100 and 3000 m from experimental colonies in Belém, Brazil, and (2) at six distances between 1500 and 10,000 m at Carajás National Forest Reserve. Return rates of workers were negatively correlated to release distance, with typical flight distances of 2 km, but a maximum homing distance of 10 km. Use of RFID tags revealed how past experiments may have greatly underestimated homing abilities of stingless bees.
Highlights
The flight distance of bees determines the area they can exploit (Gathmann et al 1994; WaltherHellwig and Frankl 2000a, b; Wright et al 2015) and must contain the resources they needElectronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.Flight distance in bees is related to their body size (Greenleaf et al 2007)
Considering that there are around 500 species of stingless bee in the world (Michener 2013), we found information on the flight range of only 27 species, which corresponds to only 5.4% (Table I)
Considering that knowledge on flight distances in stingless bees is limited (Table I) and to this date, the use of radiofrequency identification (RFID) tracking technology has not been applied to stingless bees, the main aim of the present study was to estimate the flight distance and homing ability of Melipona fasciculata Smith using RFID technology
Summary
For stingless bees, body size, measured by head width (van Nieuwstadt and Iraheta 1996), and other body measurements, including wing sizes (Araújo et al 2004), are predictors of the flight distance, even within species (Kuhn-Neto et al 2009). As a group, they present great variation in body size, which implies that individual species likely have different habitat requirements. Considering that there are around 500 species of stingless bee in the world (Michener 2013), we found information on the flight range of only 27 species, which corresponds to only 5.4% (Table I)
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