To obtain heather honey, beekeepers usually place hives with honeybees on heather-covered moors in the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland in late summer. A Swedish-Irish research team studied the effect.
"We saw that the bumblebees adapted pretty much immediately after the honeybees moved in," says biology researcher Lina Herbertsson in a press release from Lund University.
The fact that bumblebees stayed on flowers for a shorter time when honeybees appeared may be a sign that less nectar and pollen remained in the flowers. Bumblebees that were near honeybees were also smaller in size, perhaps because larger bumblebees simply flew away to areas with fewer honeybees.
The researchers hope that the results can help beekeepers and conservation biologists plan the placement of hives so that both honeybees and wild bumblebees can thrive.
