Researchers from the University of Freiburg have discovered that hedges and perennial flower strips help wild bees in apple orchards by giving them food all through the growing season. The findings are published in the Journal of Applied Ecology of the British Ecological Society.

Researchers who looked at the wild bee populations in intensively farmed orchards, which depend on pollination, found that the flowering times of hedgerows and perennial flower strips work together to increase wild bee diversity and abundance.

It was discovered that wild bee species prefer to visit flowering hedges in the early part of the season, between the months of March and June. On the other hand, they visited perennial flower strips later in the season, between the months of June and August in the first year of planting, and from April onwards in subsequent years.

Based on what they found, the researchers suggest that farmers support wild bees by planting a network of perennial flower strips and flower-rich hedges.

“For enhancing wild bees in intensive agricultural landscapes,” according to lead author Dr. Vivien von Königslöw, “one should provide a network of perennial flower strips and some well-maintained hedges to create a continuous flower offer over the entire growing season.”

The study authors also recommend perennial flower combinations, which include viper’s bugloss and mallow, over annual flower combinations.

The findings imply that perennial flower strips should be planted more frequently than annual flower strips since they flower substantially earlier in the second year of establishment than in the first year of sowing and draw in various bee groups throughout time. They are therefore better suited to increase bee diversity, according  Dr. von Königslöw.

Despite the fact that hedges and flower strips were proven to work well together, the researchers concluded that flower strips provided the most benefits to wild bees because they bloomed during times when other flowers were in short supply. Hedges, on the other hand, mostly encircled apple trees and spring-blooming orchard ground vegetation.

In places with a lot of farming, there aren’t many wild bees because there aren’t many flowers with nectar and pollen. Since crop systems like apple crop systems rely on pollination, this is a problem for farmers.

Wild bee populations can only be maintained if there is a constant supply of nectar and pollen from blooming flowers throughout the growing season. This is not the case with mass-flowering crop monocultures like fruit trees, where flowers typically only bloom for a short time.

In the study, which took place from 2018 to 2020, researchers compared the flower resources and wild bee populations in 18 apple orchards in the Lake Constance region of Germany, which is a major apple-growing region. Orchards varied in features, containing combinations perennial flower strips, hedges or improved hedges which were complemented with a sown herb layer.

Source: 10.1111/1365-2664.14277

Image Credit: Getty

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