Access to prairie pollen affects honey bee queen fecundity in the field and lab

Beekeepers experience high annual losses of colonies, with environmental stressors like pathogens, reduced forage, and pesticides as contributors. Some factors, nutritional stress from flower abundance or diversity, are more pronounced in agricultural landscapes where extensive farming limits pollen availability. In addition to affecting other aspects colony health, quantity quality available important for brood production likely queen egg laying. While some US beekeepers report >50% loss due failure, the causes poor-quality queens poorly understood. Access resources native prairie habitat is suggested a valuable late-season resource honey bees that can reverse growth declines, but it not clear how forage influences We hypothesized present an Midwestern corn/soybean agroecosystem during critical late season period affect bee laying access prairies increase productivity. To test this, we designed field experiment Iowa, keeping colonies either soybean dearth, quantified well collection (quantity species). Then, using collected experiments, created representative dietary mixtures, which fed highly controlled laboratory cages consumption these diets affected naive queens. two out three years, laid eggs compared those fields. Pollen did vary between landscapes, composition species did, was primarily driven by evening primrose ( Oenothera biennis ). When caged eggs, suggesting this landscape plays role More work needed tease apart drivers differences, understanding regulated useful designing sustainable pollinator management inform feeding regimes beekeepers.