Landscape enhancement of floral resources for honey bees in agro-ecosystems

Aménagement du paysage en vue d'améliorer les ressources florales pour les abeilles dans les agrosystèmes.

Axel Decourtye , Eric Mader , Nicolas Desneux

Honey bee populations have experienced serious losses in Europe and North America. These losses highlight the potential risk to our agricultural systems that could result from loss of pollination. These losses include direct economic repercussions to multiple industries (beekeeping, fruit, vegetable, forage seed, oil seed and biofuel crops), and corresponding threats to human nutrition. Reasons for the losses are varied but include a lack of diverse nectar and pollen resources within intensively farmed agricultural landscapes. Focusing primarily on Europe and the USA, we review the potential approaches to provide and maintain diverse floral resources for honey bees, giving particular consideration to herbaceous plants ("forbs"). These approaches include the cultivation and maintenance of "bee pastures", consisting of diverse native or non-native flower-rich plantings maintained in fallow areas, field margins, and conservation buffer strips to sustain bee populations, support honey bee health, and aid beekeeping activities. Within this review we examine specific governmental policy initiatives to support these efforts in the USA and Europe.

Mots clés: beekeeping; Apis mellifera; flower resources; agricultural landscapes; environmental policy<br>---<br>apiculture; ressources florales; paysage agricole; politique environnementale

Domaines: Zoologie des invertébrés; Biodiversité; Ecologie, Environnement; Science des productions animales

Axel Decourtye, Eric Mader, Nicolas Desneux. Landscape enhancement of floral resources for honey bees in agro-ecosystems. Apidologie, 2010, 41 (3), pp.264-277. ⟨10.1051/apido/2010024⟩. ⟨hal-00892091⟩