Friday's Agripop Talks
08 February 2013 - 11:30 - Salle Ragondin
The oilseed crop
phenology influences life history traits of honey bees in
intensive farmland
landscapes
Fabrice Requier
Pollination is a key ecosystem service, a large part of which is provided by insects, especially bees. Also modern agriculture heavily relies on pollination services (e.g. see here estimates provided by the FAO), but modern intensive farming systems negatively impact bee populations. A key difficulty for bee population is that intensively farmed landscapes are rather homogeneous and lack semi-natural vegetation patches which assure a continuous supply of food for bees. Instead, a massive supply of pollen and nectar is provided by farmed crops, such as oilseed rape, but only once during a very limited period.
Understanding how highly concentrated distribution of food resources impacts bee populations and affects the life-history traits of individuals, is one of the aims of the PhD of Fabrice. To answer this question Fabrice uses a cool study system with RFID tags applied to individual bees living in hives in different landscapes.
To hear and discuss the newest results, come this Friday!
Key-words: Honeybees, Apis
mellifera L., agricultural landscape, nutritional
stress, food availability,
crop phenology, oilseed, life-history traits, temporal
polyethism, RFID tags
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