Can bees meet their nutritional needs in the current UK landscape?

蜜蜂数量下降的一个重要但经常被忽视的原因可能是，由于全球土地管理做法的变化，这些重要的传粉者不再能够获得足够的营养。这项建议将调查蜜蜂和大黄蜂如何满足它们的营养需求，还将检查选定的英国植物物种的花粉和花蜜的营养价值，目的是预测英国蜜蜂传粉者何时出现营养不足。昆虫，特别是蜜蜂物种，负责高度多样化的植物的有性繁殖，其中许多是农作物。仅在英国，就有超过39种作物依靠昆虫传粉者生产水果和种子。在自然栖息地，蜜蜂等一群多面手蜜蜂会造访可能有数百种不同植物的花朵，寻找食物。在过去的50年里，我们的景观发生了变化，以适应现代耕作方式，即种植大片单一作物品种的田地。在单一栽培的情况下，营养平衡变得极其重要：用于授粉服务的蜜蜂群体几乎没有食物选择，获得自然植被的机会有限。具有讽刺意味的是，尽管像油菜这样的作物在开花时可能会提供大量的花粉和花蜜，但我们不知道这些花卉资源是否为蜜蜂提供了足够的营养。事实上，像蜜蜂这样的物种可能不得不从各种植物中寻找花粉和花蜜来获得足够的营养，但这一点从未得到证实。使用一种先进的建模方法来研究许多其他动物的营养，我们将通过实验确定成年工蜂和幼蜂在最佳状态下所需的蛋白质和碳水化合物的比例。我们还将研究环境条件的变化、病原体感染、农药暴露或毒素消费如何影响蜜蜂的营养需求。蜜蜂和大黄蜂学会了将花卉特征与食物联系起来，因此可以利用目前正在盛开的花朵。通过将蜜蜂置于被迫食用不平衡食物的环境中，我们将测试营养不良是否会导致蜜蜂学会选择完成饮食的食物。蜜蜂是一种群居昆虫，它们通过“舞蹈语言”将有关花卉资源的信息传达给蜂箱内的其他工蚁，以便迅速利用可用的食物来源。我们还将研究营养失衡是否会导致蜜蜂为获得营养丰富的食物而更有活力地跳舞。我们拟议研究的一个重要组成部分将使用一系列生化分析来确定重要的蜜蜂授粉植物的花粉和花蜜的营养价值。我们将重点调查英国重要的农作物(例如油菜、苹果、豌豆)，英国自然景观中发现的植物，包括入侵物种(例如三叶草、石南花、喜马拉雅香水)，以及在城市花园中发现的植物(例如薄荷、杜鹃、黄瓜)。结合这些信息和对现有科学文献的仔细分析，我们将构建一个关于开花植物花粉和花蜜的营养价值的在线数据库，以便与普通公众分享这些信息。与确定最佳蜜蜂营养的实验相结合，我们预计，我们提案中描述的研究将为确保蜜蜂获得足够营养的战略设计提供可靠的科学基础，从而帮助养蜂人、农民、土地管理人员和科学家在全球范围内阻止蜜蜂的衰退。

An important but often overlooked reason that bee populations are in decline is likely to be that these important pollinators can no longer obtain adequate nutrition as a result of changes in land management practices worldwide. This proposal will investigate how honeybees and bumblebees meet their nutritional needs and will also examine the nutritional value of pollen and nectar of selected UK plant species with the aim of predicting when bee pollinators in the UK experience nutritional short-falls. Insects, and in particular bee species, are responsible for the sexual reproduction of a highly diverse range of plants, many of which are agricultural crops. Over 39 crops in the UK alone depend upon insect pollinators for fruit and seed production. In natural habitats, a colony of 'generalist' bees such as honeybees will visit the flowers of potentially hundreds of different plant species to find food. In the past 50 years, our landscape has changed to accommodate modern farming practices that cultivate large fields of single crop species. Nutritional balance becomes extremely important in monoculture situations: honeybee colonies used for pollination services have little or no choice of food and limited access to natural vegetation.. Ironically, while crops like oilseed rape may provide vast expanses of pollen and nectar when they are in flower, we do not know if these floral resources provide adequate nutrition for bees. In fact, species like honeybees may be obliged to forage for pollen and nectar from a variety of plants to obtain adequate nutrition, but this has never been established. Using a sophisticated modelling approach that has been developed to study nutrition in many other animals, we will experimentally determine the ratio of protein and carbohydrates that adult workers and larval bees need to perform at their best. We will also examine how changes in environmental conditions, infection with pathogens, exposure to pesticides, or consumption of toxins affect a bee's nutritional needs. Honeybees and bumblebees learn to associate floral traits with food and so can exploit flowers that are currently in bloom. By placing bees under circumstances where they are forced to eat unbalanced foods, we will test whether malnourishment causes bees to learn to select foods that complete their diet. Honeybees are social insects that communicate information about floral resources to other workers within the hive via the 'dance language' in order to rapidly exploit available food sources. We will also examine whether nutritional imbalance causes bees to dance more vigorously for nutritionally complete foods. An important component of our proposed research will use a series of biochemical analyses to determine the nutritional value of pollen and nectar of important bee-pollinated plants. We will focus our investigation on important UK crops (e.g. oilseed rape, apples, peas), plants found in natural UK landscapes including invasive species (e.g. clover, heather, Himalayan balsalm), and plants found in urban gardens (e.g. mint, rhododendrons, cucumbers). Combining this information with a careful analysis of the existing scientific literature, we will construct an online database of the nutritional value of pollen and nectar of flowering plants in order to share this information with the general public. When combined with the experiments that determine optimal bee nutrition, we anticipate that the research described in our proposal will aid beekeepers, farmers, land managers, and scientists in thwarting bee decline worldwide, by providing a sound scientific basis for designing strategies to ensure that bees have access to sufficient nutrients.