"Globally, some 87 billion tons of apples are produced commercially each year, valued at over US $45 billion (€41 bn)1 – making them one of the world’s most economically important crops. Most apples are not self-fertile and rely on insect pollination to produce fruit. Although this agro-ecosystem service can be provided by a broad range of pollinators, commercial growers have largely become reliant on managed colonies of the western honey bee, Apis mellifera, brought into apple orchards during the flowering season.
However, studies increasingly show that relying on a single managed pollinator species for pollination is a risky strategy in the context of climate change. In contrast, some research has found that species richness and diversity of wild bees in the vicinity of orchards is positively associated with apple yield, weight and quality, regardless of honey-bee abundance.
Acknowledging that other factors – for example weather and management practices – are also influential, researchers in this new study sought to further investigate the role of wild bees in a large-scale field study. They sampled nearly 13 000 bees from 46 conventional and organic orchards in Belgium, France, Morocco, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK during the flowering period in 2019, and analysed bee community data for honey-bee dominance, species richness and diversity (e.g. traits and genetic information)."
Source: Weekers, T., Marshall, L., Leclercq, N., Wood, T.J., Cejas, D., Drepper, B., Garratt, M., Hutchinson, L., Roberts, S., Bosch, J. and Roquer-Beni, L. (2022) Ecological, environmental, and management data indicate apple production is driven by wild bee diversity and management practices. Ecological Indicators, 139: 108880.
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