Resilience of pollinators in a changing world
A BBSRC project investigating how changing environments affect the health of solitary and social bees
A BBSRC project investigating how changing environments affect the health of solitary and social bees
We need to understand how climate change affects the nutritional health of wild bees and their pollination preferences, which are crucial for food security.
Our project measures and models how nutrition and temperature affect two key UK pollinators. We will be studying their growth, metabolism, and survival.
We will model how bumblebees and mason bees cope with climate heating and predict shifts in their flower preferences.
Our BBSRC-funded project is investigating the nutritional health of wild bees in a changing climate.
Animals’ dietary needs and preferences may change in a warmer world. Animals select from a range of foods to get the nutrient balance they need. But warmer temperatures may change this ideal balance.
We are investigating how this problem may affect bees, which are responsible for pollinating many of our crops. Crops provide bees with pollen that is very nutritionally different, and bees need to select a mix that is right for the conditions. The climate is heating up, so the crops bees choose to visit today may not be the same tomorrow.
We need to understand how changing climates will affect bee preferences and pollination patterns – unfortunately we still have limited understanding of bees’ dietary requirements, even in today’s climate.
We are looking at two UK bee species with different lifestyles.
Bumblebees pollinate soft fruit, beans and tomatoes. They have workers that feed larvae until adulthood and keep the nest warm in winter and cool in summer.
Red mason bees pollinate apples and other fruit. Mother bees work alone, provide larvae with a single pollen ball, and cannot control nest temperature.
In both species we are gathering detailed data on how nutrition and temperature affect bee health, establishing the best diet at a range of temperatures. Then, we will test whether adults can maintain optimal diets for larvae when the temperature changes.
Our work will fill a gap in our knowledge about how bees with different lifestyles cope with climate heating. With this knowledge, we can predict whether bees are likely to abandon particular crops in a hotter world, as they change their preferences, and design custom wildflower mixes to promote specific pollinators.
Once we understand bees’ dietary needs, and how these needs might change in warmer climates, we can design appropriate, future-proof mitigation/intervention measures.
Dr James Gilbert
Mid-December, we presented the first results of the grant at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the British Ecological Society in Liverpool. The poster presented the data obtained during the summer 2024 field experiment, focusing on the effect of rising temperatures on the nesting behaviour of red mason bees. You can find the results in detail […]
Background and methods We conducted a field experiment during the summer of 2024 to answer the following question: Do adult bees adjust larval pollen provisions to the nest temperature? Nine wooden nests were heated at three temperatures (ambient, ambient + 4°C & ambient + 8°C) on our study site. From late June to mid-August, we […]
Even though almost all the larvae have now spun their cocoons, that doesn’t mean our work is finished! Indeed, Osmia bicornis larvae go through major life stages after cocoon completion, notably developing into adults inside their cocoons. This step is crucial because a larva that does not transform into an adult before winter will not […]
Autumn is approaching, which means that fieldwork is coming to an end! With the weather getting colder and wetter, it was time to transfer the cocoons to the lab, where they will be protected from weather hazards such as heavy rain. We chose a particularly rainy and gloomy day to pack up all the equipment […]
