A study of the waggle dances of honeybees shows that bees in central London don鈥檛 have to fly as far to find food as those living in farmland outside the city.
鈥淲e knew that big cities were good for bees, but our study is contributing to showing why,鈥� says at Royal Holloway, University of London. 鈥淭here is more forage available.鈥�
In the summer of 2017, Leadbeater and her colleague visited 20 hives every two weeks to record waggle dances. The hives had glass panels, allowing the dances to be filmed without disturbing the bees. Ten of the hives were in farmland around London and 10 were in the centre of the city.
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The waggle dances of honeybees reveal the direction and approximate distance of the best nectar sources found by foraging workers. Overall, Leadbeater and Samuelson 鈥� and their colleague at Virginia Tech 鈥� decoded nearly 3000 waggle dances.
This showed that the median distance to sources of nectar was around 490 metres for city colonies, but 740 metres for those in farmland. The longest distance in this study was around 9 kilometres, although bees can fly up to 14 kilometres to a food resource, says Leadbeater.
The findings suggest that the availability of food, rather than less pesticides or diseases, is the key reason why honeybees do better in cities than farmland, she says. Gardens and parks provide more diverse, plentiful and reliable resources than farms.
Gardeners usually aim to have flowers throughout spring and summer, and water plants during dry periods, says Leadbeater. But because green spaces within urban areas are small compared with farmland, they don鈥檛 make up for the impoverishment of farmland.
The findings probably apply generally even though parts of London are greener than some other cities in Europe. 鈥淭he area of London that we studied is pretty much full of concrete,鈥� says Leadbeater. She adds that the findings also probably apply to bumblebees as well as honeybees, but may not be true for solitary bees.
Journal of Applied Ecology
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