Foraging rates of different Apis species visiting parental lines of Brassica napus L.

Abstract

© Zoo Outreach Organisation; www.zoosprint.org Manuscript 1315; Received 10 January 2005; Revised received 23 May 2005; Finally accepted 04 February 2006; Date of publication 21 March 2005 2226 Most of the insect pollinators of Brassica crops belong to Apis species. Foraging rate is one of the important factors to compare pollination efficiency of different bee species. In general, more the foraging frequency, more the chances of pollination. The number of flowers visited per minute by any bee species depends upon the number of factors including instinctive foraging behaviour, length of proboscis (Inouye, 1980) floral structure (Free, 1970) particularly the corolla depth (Gilbert, 1980) type and quantity of floral rewards (Rao & Suryanarayana, 1990; Rao, 1991) density of flowers on particular cultivar of the crop concerned and hours of the day. The present paper reports the comparision of foraging rates of various honeybee species on parental lines of B. napus at different hours of the day.