Training honey bees to commercial crops

FARINA WALTER M.

Montreal

Congreso; 46th International Apicultural Congress; 2019

Apimondia

The main economic contribution of the honey bee Apis mellifera is not the honey and other products obtained from their hives, but their ability to pollinate the most varied agricultural crops, including fruits of high quality and seeds for oils. As an established insect species worldwide, its use as a pollen vector generates significant profits in terms of agricultural production. Agronomic and veterinary sciences have made notable contributions to improve the relationship between honey bees and crops. However, knowledge from the biological sciences, such as honey bee behavior, physiology and ecology have been less taken into account in order to achieve an improvement in pollination efficiency and crop yield. Nowadays it is clear that the sophisticated honey bee communication systems together with its cognitive abilities are nodal to understand how individual and social information is used during the collective search for resources. With the aim of improving the bee-crop relationship, our laboratory has developed an interdisciplinary project focused on the cognitive ecology of the honey bee in commercial crops. Within this frame, a platform of environmentally friendly formulations promoting the directed pollination of these insects in crops has been developed. These tools not only increase crop yields, but also improve the sanitary and population status of colonies used in pollination services. On this talk, I will focus on some results that we obtained in different commercial crops.