=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3293/paper55
|storemode=property
|title=Botanical Origin and Share of Agricultural Crops in Honey During One Growing Season in Estonian Beehives - Abstract
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3293/paper55.pdf
|volume=Vol-3293
|authors=Kaarel Pent,Risto Raimets,Sigmar Naudi,Margret Jürison,Reet Karise
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/haicta/PentRNJK22
}}
==Botanical Origin and Share of Agricultural Crops in Honey During One Growing Season in Estonian Beehives - Abstract==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3293/paper55.pdf
Botanical Origin and Share of Agricultural Crops in Honey
During One Growing Season in Estonian Beehives - Abstract
Kaarel Pent 1, Risto Raimets 2, Sigmar Naudi 3, Margret Jürison 4 and Reet Karise 5
1
Estonian University of Life Sciences, Kreutzwaldi 1, Tartu, 51006, Estonia
Summary1
In last decades, concern about the health of pollinator and their provided pollinating service is
grown exceptionally. Most prevalent concern is the decreasing number of honeybee colonies,
reported by beekeepers. Main stressors that can lead to the loss of colonies are considered to
be: use of pesticides, loss of habitat, decrease in diverse food sources and also pathogens. Often
the real cause of colony loss, is not clear, which means the reason lies in combination of
different factors. Factors that individually would have not caused the lethal outcome. Due to
intensive agriculture in most regions honeybees are managed, natural pollinators, managed
bees and other organism have had to adapt to new food sources and living conditions. Mixed
food sources honeybees are dependent both, on natural landscapes with natural forage plants
and agricultural landscapes with concentrated agricultural plants. Critical aspect for
beekeepers, to achieve maximum honey production is the selecting the best location for the
season, for their colonies. Natural nectar sources are ensuring constant food source through the
foraging season. Agricultural crops in the other hand are proven to be the dominant source of
honey for many Estonian honeybee colonies. This means, beekeepers have to communicate
with the farmers to choose the best location for their colony groups. Certain agricultural crops
are considered to be good forage plants, and attractive to pollinators. This study will give an
overview of the pollen sources that occurred in the honey across Estonian honeybee colonies
in the summer of 2021. Study is based on honey samples collected from 60 different colonies,
in June, July and August. Data about crops in agricultural landuse is provided be ARIB (The
Agricultural Registers and Information Board). This gives a overview of changes in food
sources through the foraging season. Also giving insight on the attractiveness of agricultural
crops in the sense of effort and reward taking into account the distance and size of the visited
fields. These results can be used by beekeepers to adjust their colony group placement in certain
landscapes to ensure maximum potential for honey production and also to assess risks
accompanied by crops in the area with intense use of potentially dangerous agrochemicals. For
the farmers, this study will be a good indicator of, which crops are pollinated and does the
communication between the farmer and beekeeper is enough to provide sufficient pollination
for their crops. First results show that agricultural crops were present in the pollen in all three
months of sample collection. Average percentage of agricultural crops were highest in June
and July, when rapeseed Brassica napus was the dominant culture, present in more than 20
samples with the 53% average of all the pollen detected in these samples. Also, buckwheat
(Fagopyrum esculentum), clovers (Trifolium L.) and horticultural crops where present in the
sampled honey. Results show that not all agricultural crops, considered attractive foraging
crops in close proximity of colonies, would not necessarily be present in the honey. Or are
present, but the amount of pollen is not proportional with the distance and size of fields with
observed crops. Attractive and productive field crops for the honeybees are considered to be:
California bluebell (Phacelia tanacetifolia), Sainfoin (Onobrychis viciifolia) Honey clover
(Melilotus albus) Fodder galega (Galega orientalis) White clover (Trifolium repens),
Proceedings of HAICTA 2022, September 22–25, 2022, Athens, Greece
EMAIL: kaarel.pent@emu.ee (A. 1); risto.raimets@emu.ee (A. 2); sigmar.naudi@emu.ee (A. 3); margret.jurison@emu.ee (A. 4);
reet.karise@emu.ee (A. 5)
ORCID: 0000-0002-7629-6034 (A. 1); 0000-0001-6299-4862 (A. 2); 0000-0003-3890-1042 (A. 3); 0000-0001-5024-7405 (A. 4); 0000-
0002-6921-0167 (A. 5)
©️ 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
304
Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum), Rapeseed (Brassica napus), Alfalfa (Medicago) Pink
clover (Trifolium hybridum), White mustard (Sinapis alba), Red Clover (Trifolium pratense).
Keywords
Pollinators, pollen, land use, floral resources, honeybee
305