ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Bee Sci.
Sec. Bees in Pollination
Volume 3 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frbee.2025.1508958
This article is part of the Research TopicWomen in Bee ScienceView all 4 articles
Introduced honey bees have the potential to reduce fitness of cavity-nesting native bees in terms of a male bias sex ratio, brood mortality and reduced reproduction
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia
- 2School of Molecular and Life Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia
- 3University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, Australia
- 4University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
- 5Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Kunming, Yunnan, China
- 6School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia
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In Australia, as well as many other regions of the world, European honey bees Apis mellifera are an introduced species and may harm native bee fauna through competing with them for food resources. Field studies have revealed negative associations between honey bee and native bee abundance, but whether this translates to fitness costs for native bees is unclear.Methods: Using drilled wooden block trap-nests, we evaluate whether honey bee abundance is associated with fitness parameters (number of nests, provisioned cells per nest, and offspring number, mortality rate, sex ratio, and body size) of cavity-nesting native bees over two years. We also conduct palynological analyses to measure pollen resource overlap and evaluate whether this impacts native bee fitness.Results and Discussion: Greater honey bee abundance was associated with a male-biased sex ratio in the native bee progeny across years, and increased mortality rate of native bee progeny in the first year. Most non-significant associations were also in the directions predicted from honey bees adversely impacting native bee fitness. In the first year, greater pollen morphospecies overlap was associated with fewer provisioned cells. In conclusion, we demonstrate that honey bees have the potential to have harmful consequences for native bee fitness.
Keywords: Anthophila, bee hotels, bees, conservation, competition, ecology, honeybees, pollen, trap-nests, wild bees bees, competition, Native bees, Pollen, Resource overlap, Trap-nests, Wild bees
Received: 10 Oct 2024; Accepted: 21 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Prendergast, Murphy, Kevan, Ren and Milne. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kit Prendergast, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia
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