Floral resource wastage: Most nectar produced by the mass-flowering crop oilseed rape () is uncollected by flower-visiting insects.

Cultivation of the mass-flowering crop oilseed rape (OSR), , can provide insects with super-abundant nectar and pollen while in bloom. Several authors have suggested breeding cultivars to produce more abundant nectar and pollen to help mitigate insect decline. However, in Britain most, 95%, OSR blooms in spring (March-May), which has been suggested to be a period of nectar surplus and reduced exploitative competition.

Why Petals? Naïve, but Not Experienced Bees, Preferentially Visit Flowers with Larger Visual Signals.

Flower evolution includes a range of questions concerning the function of showy morphological features such as petals. Despite extensive research on the role of petals in attracting pollinators, there has been little experimental testing of their importance in attracting naïve versus experienced flower-visitors. In an exploratory field study, we manipulated the ray petals of inflorescences of two garden flowers, and to test the hypothesis that these showy structures primarily function to attract first-time, naïve, visitors.

DoPI: The Database of Pollinator Interactions.

Despite the importance of pollinating insects to natural environments and agriculture, there have been few attempts to unite the existing plant-pollinator interaction datasets into a single depository using a common format. Accordingly, we have created one of the world's first online, open-access, and searchable pollinator-plant interaction databases. DoPI (The Database of Pollinator Interactions) was built from a systematic review of the scientific literature and unpublished datasets requested from researchers and organizations.

Plants and pollinators: Will natural selection cause an imbalance between nectar supply and demand?

Pollination is an important ecological process. However, plant and pollinator needs are not always met. Commonly, pollen limitation reduces seed set or bees experience nectar dearth.

Energetic efficiency of foraging mediates bee niche partitioning.

Revitalizing our understanding of species distributions and assembly in community ecology requires greater use of functional (physiological) approaches based on quantifiable factors such as energetics. Here, we explore niche partitioning between bumble and honey bees by comparing a measure of within-patch foraging efficiency, the ratio of flower visitation rate (proportional to energy gain) to body mass (energy cost). This explained a remarkable 74% of the variation in the proportions of bumble to honey bees across 22 plant species and was confirmed using detailed energy calculations.

Gut microbiota composition is associated with environmental landscape in honey bees.

There is growing recognition that the gut microbial community regulates a wide variety of important functions in its animal hosts, including host health. However, the complex interactions between gut microbes and environment are still unclear. Honey bees are ecologically and economically important pollinators that host a core gut microbial community that is thought to be constant across populations.

Landscape Scale Study of the Net Effect of Proximity to a Neonicotinoid-Treated Crop on Bee Colony Health.

Since 2013, the European Commission has restricted the use of three neonicotinoid insecticides as seed dressings on bee-attractive crops. Such crops represent an important source of forage for bees, which is often scarce in agro-ecosystems. However, this benefit has often been overlooked in the design of previous field studies, leaving the net impact of neonicotinoid treated crops on bees relatively unknown.

Quality versus quantity: Foraging decisions in the honeybee () feeding on wildflower nectar and fruit juice.

Foraging animals must often decide among resources which vary in quality and quantity. Nectar is a resource that exists along a continuum of quality in terms of sugar concentration and is the primary energy source for bees. Alternative sugar sources exist, including fruit juice, which generally has lower energetic value than nectar.