The Latest In Honey Bee Research: 'The apple of their compound eyes - bees that prefer to forage for apple pollen'

摘要

The heralding of honey bees as "angels of agriculture" is well-known and arguably well-deserved. The nickname refers to the fact that foraging honey bees routinely pollinate many of the agricultural crops that help feed us humans. As we continue to breed crops that show "improvement" relative to our own interests (such as apples that color to a deep even red and keep in storage for long periods), we have often ignored the "interests" of honey bees in the endeavor. Thus, in the case of some cultivarsof onions, breeders selected for sweet and large bulbs, without considering the relative attractiveness to pollinators. These particularly "sweet" onion varieties can then be surprisingly more difficult to pollinate for seed production than your averageonion (which is not very attractive to bees anyway!). Are plant breeders selecting for onions that concentrate more sugars in the bulb at the expense of bee-attractive sugars in the nectar? This remains a topic for further research. However, reduced pollinator attractiveness under such circumstances is probably unsurprising and may even be expected unless plant breeders begin to include some measure of selection for "attractiveness to pollinators" in their breeding scheme. If the plant breeders don't do it - then what alternatives do we have?