Management of Osmia lignaria (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae) Populations for Almond Pollination: Methods to Advance Bee Emergence

By J. Bosch, William P. Kemp, S. Peterson. 2000

95 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The objective of this study was to find one or more rearing methods that would allow us to release Osmia lignaria Say populations from natal nests to pollinate February-flowering almonds, Prunus amygdalus Batsch, in California’s Central Valley. We exposed three phenologically distinct O. lignaria populations (early-, mid-, and late-flying) to different temperature treatments through development and wintering for a total of nine rearing treatments. These treatments combined three approaches to obtain early bee emergence: (1) exposing bees to warmer or fluctuating temperatures, or both, during development; (2) exposing bees to warmer wintering temperatures; and (3) using early-flying bee populations from Central Valley California latitudes. Extended periods of high prewintering temperatures resulted in apparent fat body consumption of prewintering adults and reductions in springtime adult longevity. In general, temperature treatments that promoted rapid immature development, and thus longer wintering periods, resulted in earlier spring emergence patterns of bees well timed with bloom period of almonds. Warmer wintering periods also resulted in earlier emergence. In addition to providing good bee-bloom synchrony, several treatments also yielded vigorous emerging populations, rapid establishment and nesting, and population increases. The potential importance of our results to anticipated increases in the demand for pollination services in California’s Central Valley almonds is discussed.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Genetics, Insect Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/074dbbaf09f5c969cfaed63d3b04473fd864896f

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Citations in the corpus

Plant–pollinator interactions and phenological change: what can we learn about climate impacts from experiments and observations? (2015, background): “…rear insect pollinators such as Osmia bees such that they emerge as adults at diff erent times (as is commonly done for agricultural applications; Bosch et al. 2000) and subsequently monitor their nesting success – although observing post-manipulation fi tness of small wild animals is a…”
Foraging behavior and pollinating effectiveness of Osmia cornuta (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae) and Apis mellifera (Hymenoptera: Apidae) on “Comice” pear (2004, background): “In both O. cornuta and the closely-related Osmia lignaria Say, long pre-wintering regimes have been associated with body weight losses, fat body depletion, decreased vigor and increased winter mortality (Bosch et al., 2000; Bosch and Kemp, 2004).”
Effects of constant and fluctuating temperatures on the development of the solitary bee Osmia bicornis (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae) (2011, background): “Since all bees were transferred to 4°C when the slowest group (17.5°C) had completed their development, particularly the bees in the warm treatments experienced a long pre-wintering period (about 60–70 days) in high temperatures that probably caused the very high adult mortality due to fat body depl”
Effect of pre-wintering and wintering temperature regimes on weight loss, survival, and emergence time in the mason bee Osmia cornuta (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae) (2004, background): “…adulthood occurrence spanned more than one month and late-developing individuals (wintered 9–16 days after adulthood), showed less evidence of fat body depletion and had longer post-emergence longevity than early-developing individuals (wintered 37–51 days after adulthood) (Bosch et al., 2000).”
Effect of Wintering Duration and Temperature on Survival and Emergence Time in Males of the Orchard Pollinator Osmia lignaria (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae) (2003, methodology): “…Research Service, Bee Biology and Systematics Laboratory, Logan, UT 84322Ð5310. temperature treatments onO. lignaria spring-summer development rates and survival has been reported in somedetail (Bosch andKemp 2000, Bosch et al. 2000), but wintering treatments have received less attention.”