2005 Cilt 5 Sayı 1

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The flower fıdelıty of the honeybee
(Uludağ Üniversitesi, 2005) Sanderson, Charlotte; Wells, Harrington
Since the time of Aristotle, it has been observed that honeybees show remarkable fidelity to a plant species when visiting a patch of flowers to forage. This pollinator flower constancy, in fact, is not limited to a few flowers in a set of sequentially visited flowers. A mere 6% of the pollen in a pollenload returned to the hive by a forger is from more than one plant species (e.g. Free 1963; Moezel et al. 1987). In the agricultural literature this flower fidelity of honeybee foragers became known as ‘crop attachment’. Here, we review what is known about why a honeybee typically chooses to forage from a single flower type despite the wide range of options available to it. Although the flower fidelity of honeybees is legendary (Aristotle 330 B.C.; Virgil 30 B.C.; Butler 1609; Benett 1883; Maeterlink 1901; Ribbands 1953; Hill et al. 1997), flower constancy at times is not observed, and this is important when considering why flower fidelity is so prevalent among honeybee foragers.