Understanding honey bee forage requirements and the impacts of urban hives on wild bees

There is limited knowledge of the impacts of honey bee hives on wild bees and the amount of floral resources honey bees require, which are both needed for addressing whether landscapes have enough resources for all bees. I developed a model to calculate the number of flowers and area a honey bee hive requires using information compiled from published literature (Chapter 1), and I performed a field study to assess the impacts of urban beehives on wild bees (Chapter 2). My models output is highly variable due to the limited amount of available peer-reviewed literature on needed parameters, but it serves as a starting point to assess how much floral resources honey bee hives require. My field studys main findings were that increasing honey bee abundance was associated with decreases in the abundance and body size of certain bee species, as well as reduced species richness and functional diversity

Floral Use Competition Between Honey Bees and Bumble Bees Within an Urban Community

The global increase in the number of managed honey bees (Apis mellifera) has raised concerns about their impact on native pollinator species, including bumble bees (Bombus spp.). This study examines the extent of floral resource overlap between honey bees and bumble bees in urban areas within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Ontario, Canada, to better understand how competition for floral resources may influence bumble bee foraging behavior and niche partitioning. Pollen samples were collected from 541 bees, representing seven Bombus species and honey bees, across ten urban sites with high vs low honey bee abundance. We analyzed the floral use of bumble bees at sites with high and low honey bee abundance to assess the potential impact of competition. Our results show significant overlap in the floral resources used by honey bees and bumble bees, with bumble bees interacting with a slightly broader range of floral genera. Despite this high overlap, no significant difference was found in the overall floral genera visitation of bumble bees between sites with different honey bee abundances. However, some floral genera were more frequently visited by bumble bees at sites with lower honey bee abundance, indicating possible niche partitioning in response to competition. The findings highlight the potential for competition between honey bees and bumble bees to influence floral resource use, with possible implications for bumble bee health and conservation. This study underscores the need for pollinator conservation strategies that minimize negative impacts on wild bee populations, such as urban rewilding initiatives that increase native floral diversity such as the creation of meadows. By providing insights into the dynamics of pollinator interactions, this research contributes to our understanding of the ecological balance between managed and wild pollinators in urban environments

Fecal sampling protocol to assess bumble bee health in conservation research

An increasing number of wild bee species are declining or threatened with extinction worldwide. Decline has been proposed to be caused by a combination of threats, including increasing wild bee disease prevalence and pathogen spillover from managed bees that can reduce health of wild bees. Most approaches aiming at characterizing bee health, however, require sacrificing tens to hundreds of individual bees per site or species, with reports of several thousand individuals collected per study. Considering the widespread need to assess bee health, this sampling approach is not sustainable, especially for endangered populations or species. Here, we present a non-destructive protocol to collect bumble bee faeces and assess parasite loads of wild-caught individuals. The standard protocol consists of net-capturing individual bumble bees and placing them in a 10 cm (diameter) petri dish to collect faeces. This fecal screening approach is frequently used in laboratory settings, but much less in the field, which can impair conservation research. When placing bumble bees in a previously refrigerated cooler, we successfully collected faeces for 86% individuals, while the standard protocol, as used in laboratory settings, yielded 76% success in collecting faeces. We also identified cells and spores of two common gut parasites Crithidia spp. and Vairimorpha spp. in faecal samples. The faecal sampling presented here opens future avenues to assess bee pathogen loads using molecular techniques, while collected faeces could also be used to assess bee health more broadly, including bee microbiota and bee diet

Adult Safeguarding and People Living with Dementia in Nursing Homes

While there has been an increased focus on ageing in place in the Irish context, for some people, including people living with dementia (PLWD), nursing home care may be required to adequately meet their care needs as their dementia progresses and care needs increase. Nursing homes are the homes of many PLWD who, despite their frailty and health problems (including dementia), should be supported to enjoy a good quality of life, maintain, and develop relationships, and contribute to society (ADI, 2013).University College DublinIrish Dementia Working Group/AS

Estimating flower and area requirements for honey bees

We estimated the flower and area requirements for a honey bee hive within temperate climates to gain a better understanding of potential hive density restrictions that could be put in place for the health of honey bees and wild bees

Assessing the impacts of urban beehives on wild bees using individual, community, and population-level metrics

Several species of wild bees are in decline globally and the presence of managed honey bees is one of many proposed stressors on wild bee populations. However, there is limited knowledge of the impacts of honey bee hives on wild bees, especially in urban landscapes. We performed a field study to assess the associations between honey bees and wild bees within the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada. We measured relative abundance of honey bees, wild bee metrics (abundance, community composition, functional diversity, and body size), and floral resources (floral density and richness); we also calculated impervious surface at 500 m and 1 km for each of our sites. Our main findings were that increasing honey bee abundance was correlated with decreases in wild bee species richness and functional diversity, as well as two wild bee species’ abundances and one wild bee species body size, out of many assessed. This research adds to the growing body of literature aiming to evaluate whether honey bees are a stressor on wild bees in urban landscapes, which will be valuable for informing conservation management practices and future research.We thank NSERC, OGS, Entomological Society of Canada, and Enbridge for funding for this research that was awarded to Sarah MacKell