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Video Q&A ViewAttendees 7

Plant-Insect Ecosystems

Student Competition 10-Minute Paper

Grad P-IE: Pollination On-Demand Presentations

Measuring floral resources: How to predict bumble bee foraging choices?

On-Demand
Student Competition On-Demand

    Presenting Author(s)

  • Jennifer A. Lipka

    MSc Student
    University of British Columbia
    Surrey, British Columbia, Canada

    • Co-Author(s)

  • JC

    Juli Carrillo

    Assistant Professor
    University of British Columbia
    Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Native pollinators, like bumble bees, are vital for supplementing pollination in agriculture to ensure adequate crop yields. Bumble bees must have access to sufficient forage during critical colony phases in the spring and throughout the summer. Despite growing interest in the temporal availability of floral resources for bees, how well the measurements of floral resources predict foraging choices has yet to be tested. Using the UBC farm as a research site, the objective of this research is to examine the relationship between bumble bee foraging choice and the availability of floral resources to determine what metrics of floral resources best predicts bumble bee choice. Various methods exist to quantify floral resource quality, such as flower and pollen availability, pollen and nectar quality, and floral dimensions. To address this objective, we conducted bumble bee surveys and collected the pollen from the corbicula to assess foraging choice. Additionally, we conducted floral surveys and investigated the quantity and quality of both nectar and pollen of various flowering species to determine how these different measurements align with bumble bee foraging choices. Our hypothesis is that floral availability alone will not align with bumble bee foraging choice but certain floral metrics, such as nectar and pollen quantity and quality in addition to floral dimensions, are better predictors of bumble bee foraging choice. Our research will provide insight into how floral resource measurements perform to aid in conservation efforts to ensure that bumble bees have access to consistent, reliable and plentiful forage throughout their active periods.