Project
Modelling pollination in agro-environment in Flanders to create synergy between domesticated honeybees and wild bees.
Pollination provides direct benefits to human welfare. More than 70% of the major agricultural
crops and more than 85% of all flowering plants depend on insect pollination for the development
of seeds and/or fruits. This ecosystem service is threatened, due to pollinator diversity losses and
species restriction around the world. Losses are counteracted by addition of domesticated
honeybees, while it are diverse pollinator communities, especially of wild bees, providing the most
stable and effective pollination services for agriculture. Within this project we aim to improve the
existing models, mapping available nest and floral resources to predict pollination services in
orchards. Such models provide the needed insight to mitigate losses of pollination with a direct
focus on the crop of interest. We will focus on two important crops for Flanders, namely apple and
sweet cherry. We will integrate the competition factor between domesticated honeybees and wild
bees into the pollination model. This will allow to calculate the impact of relocating honeybees to
orchards on the services provided by wild bees. We focus on creating synergy effects between bees,
to allow higher and better fruit quality for farmers. The predictive framework will also serve the
beekeeper who seeks high quality environments, but also meets European biodiversity conservation
goals, as the model can be applied to predict competition with habitat restricted and rare bee
species.