Bean cultivation in diverse agricultural landscapes encourages bees and increases yields

Researchers led by the University of Göttingen study bee behaviour and yield development. Pollination by insects is essential for the production of many food crops. The occurrence of pollinators such as bees depends on whether nesting sites and sufficient food are available. If these conditions are lacking, the pollinators also fail to appear and the yield of flowering arable crops such as field beans and rape suffers. A team from the University of Göttingen and the Julius Kühn-Institut (JKI) in Braunschweig has investigated how the landscape composition of flowering crops and near-natural habitats affects the densities of bees, their behaviour when collecting nectar and the yields of field beans (Vicia faba L. The results of the study have been published in the journal Basic and Applied Ecology. The researchers show that in landscapes with a high proportion of semi-natural habitats and in landscapes with a high proportion of field bean fields, more bumblebees were found in field bean fields. In addition, bean yields were higher in these landscapes.