Many crops depend on the presence of bees for pollination and can experience major crop losses if sufficient bee populations are not present. In instances where wild pollinators are insufficient, honey bees are brought in during flower bloom. This is common practice in California Almonds, for example, and many other crops. However, the agricultural demand for honey bees is growing faster than honey bees supply. One way to increase crop yield without additional honey bees is to increase the pollination efficiency of honey bees that are present in a field or orchard.
A recent study by researchers from Germany at Leuphana University of Lüneburg and California at UC Berkeley and Davis found that when there was a greater amount of biodiversity, and other species of bees were present, honey bee pollination activity and efficiency increased in California almond orchards. Also, orchard that had populations of wild pollinators had increased yield, not only because of increased direct almond pollination, but also because of the indirect effect of increasing pollination by honey bees.
Furthermore, a second study on the topic found two other ways that increased biodiversity of pollinators improved overall pollination in almonds. Honey bees preferred to pollinate flowers in the top parts of the trees. Wild pollinators that were present pollinated flowers in the lower parts of the trees that honey bees left behind, increasing the overall pollination. Also, orchards with heavy wind gusts had greatly decreased pollination from honeybees. However, wild pollinators were able to pollinate even when winds were present. These wild pollinators provided the orchard with sustained pollination even in extreme weather conditions, which could be very valuable at different points of the season, or in orchards with heavy winds.
Both studies show the importance of biodiversity in orchards and the importance of conserving and maintaining wild pollinators and bee species outside of honeybees. Care needs to be given to sustaining not just honey bee populations, but wild bee species as well, when considering how management practices, such as pesticide sprays, may affect the orchard ecosystem. Increasing biodiversity in an orchard presents an avenue for increasing crop yields in a sustainable way without additional honey bees.
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