Wild pollinators contribute more than bees
They discovered that populations of honey bees have dived so dramatically in recent years that they can only do half of the pollination than in the early 1980s.
Where bees used to provide about 70 percent of the pollination needs of the United Kingdom, now they only pollinate a third. In the worst case, that figure could well be more than 10 to 15 percent.
Paradoxically, in the last 20 years, the proportion of UK crops that depend on insects for pollination has increased from just under 8 percent in the early 1980s to 20 percent in 2007. And during the same period , yields of insect-pollinated crops, which include rapeseed and field beans, have increased by 54 percent.
This means that bees cannot be the only ones responsible, or they are not the only important pollinator.
So, if the bees are not pollinating the crops, what is it? Researchers think that other important pollinating insects, such as bumblebees, floating flies and solitary bees should be compensating for the deficit.
"Our finding suggests that wild insect pollinators make a much larger contribution to crop pollination in the UK than previously thought," says Tom Breeze of the University of Reading, lead author of the study.
£ 400 million per year
It is estimated that the pollination of insects has a value of around £ 400 million per year for agricultural agriculture in the United Kingdom. And so far, people have widely assumed that honey bees are the most important pollinators, with a figure of around 90 percent of pollination services from honey bees.
“We had a slant that this was not an exact figure at all,” Breeze says. "Bees have been in decline for years, so it didn't make sense."
In fact, there is zero large-scale research that supports the assumption that bees are the largest pollinators.
So Breeze and his colleagues at the University of Reading set out to know the importance of insect-pollinated crops for agriculture in the United Kingdom and, using data from a previous study, find out the real contribution of honey bees.
This is the first time someone looks at the contribution of honey bees and other large-scale pollinators.
“Bumblebees, hoverflies and red mason bees are key wild pollinators, but there are at least 250 species of bees in the UK alone, which we think almost certainly contribute more than honey bees,” says Breeze.
Although Breeze and his colleagues discovered that honey bees do not provide the same level of service as other species, they point out that neither a pollinator nor the other is important; Both types are crucial.
“There was a seminal study in 2006 that found that you get the best pollination, the best yields, and the best fruit when you have wild pollinators and honey bees,” Breeze says.
He says that the next step for this research is to do the same at European level to compare different countries with the situation in the United Kingdom and go to the fields to see which pollinators are pollinating.
“This study challenges long-held beliefs around the importance of honey bees as primary pollinators and could lead to a paradigm shift in people's thinking,” says Dr. Andrew Impey, Science and Innovation Manager at the Natural Environment Research Council.
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