The honey and the ivy - why gardeners’ foe is the bees’ friend
The honey and the ivy - why gardeners' foe is the bees' friend. Ivy, often maligned as a garden pest, is vital to honey bees and other pollinators seeking food in autumn, new research from the University of Sussex reveals. The research, carried out by scientists at the University's Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects ( LASI ) is published online today (26 April 2013) in the journal Insect Conservation and Diversity 1. It builds on LASI research into honey bee waggle dances and forms part of a wider project, 'Helping the honey bee and insect pollinators in urban areas', funded by The Body Shop Foundation. Honey bees returning from successful forage trips perform the waggle dance to tell nest mates where to find nectar and pollen-rich flowers (the dance indicates the direction and distance to the flowers). Researchers video then decode the waggle dances and use the data to find out how far bees fly, where they go to and what types of plants they are feeding on at different times in the year. The waggle dance data - collected from hives at the University, from nearby Falmer village and Brighton's Dorothy Stringer School - showed that, contrary to what might be expected, bee foraging distances decreased from summer to the autumn.
