Institute of Biology, Karl-Franzen University of Graz, Universitätsplatz 2, 8010, Graz, Austria.
Institute of Environmental Systems Science, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Merangasse 18/I, 8010, Graz, Austria.
Sci Rep. 2023 Sep 7;13(1):14753. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-42102-4.
Honeybees are the most widespread managed pollinators of our food crops, and a crucial part of their well-being is a suitable diet. Yet, we do not know how they choose flowers to collect nectar or pollen from. Here we studied forty-three honeybee colonies in six apiaries over a summer, identifying the floral origins of honey and hive-stored pollen samples by DNA-metabarcoding. We recorded the available flowering plants and analyzed the specialized metabolites in honey. Overall, we find that honeybees use mostly the same plants for both nectar and pollen, yet per colony less than half of the plant genera are used for both nectar and pollen at a time. Across samples, on average fewer plant genera were used for pollen, but the composition was more variable among samples, suggesting higher selectivity for pollen sources. Of the available flowering plants, honeybees used only a fraction for either nectar or pollen foraging. The time of summer guided the plant choices the most, and the location impacted both the plants selected and the specialized metabolite composition in honey. Thus, honeybees are selective for both nectar and pollen, implicating a need of a wide variety of floral resources to choose an optimal diet from.
蜜蜂是我们食物作物中最广泛应用的管理授粉媒介，它们健康的关键是要有适宜的饮食。然而，我们不知道它们是如何选择花朵来采集花蜜或花粉的。在这里，我们在一个夏季的六个养蜂场研究了四十三群蜜蜂，通过 DNA 代谢组学来鉴定蜂蜜和蜂房储存的花粉样本的花卉来源。我们记录了可用的开花植物，并分析了蜂蜜中的特殊代谢物。总的来说，我们发现蜜蜂同时使用的植物种类大多用于采集花蜜和花粉，但每个蜂群同时用于采集花蜜和花粉的植物属不到一半。在样本中，花粉的植物属使用得更少，但组成在样本之间变化更大，这表明对花粉来源的选择性更高。在可用的开花植物中，蜜蜂只选择了一小部分植物来采集花蜜或花粉。夏季的时间对植物选择的影响最大，地点既影响了所选植物，也影响了蜂蜜中的特殊代谢物组成。因此，蜜蜂对花蜜和花粉都有选择性，这意味着需要选择各种各样的花卉资源来选择最佳饮食。
