Mass-flowering crops: cost or benefit to bumblebees and wild flower pollination?

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The overarching aim of this project is to evaluate how mass- flowering crops, pollinators and wildflowers interact in arable ecosystems. Specific objectives of this project: A Determine whether mass-flowering crops affect the growth of colonies of long and short-tongued bumblebee species in arable farmland, and whether colony growth is limited by availability of forage at particular times in the season. B Determine whether mass-flowering crops have a competitive or facilitatory effect on pollination and seed-set of selected field-margin and hedgerow wildflowers varying in floral morphology and phenology, which are growing in the vicinity. C Use a GIS-based forage map and associated model to predict first, how the distribution and phenology of both mass- flowering crops and wildflowers in the landscape determine pollinator abundance and, in particular which areas act as sinks and which act as sources for bumblebees (net exporters of queens) for two bumblebee species, B. pascuorum and B. lapidarius and second, the impact of mass forage crops on the viability of wildflower populations.

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