Honeybees' foraging choices for nectar and pollen revealed by DNA metabarcoding

Abstract

Honeybees are the most widespread managed pollinators of our food crops, and a crucial part of their well-being is a suitable diet. Yet, we do not know how they choose flowers to collect nectar or pollen from. Here we studied forty-three honeybee colonies in six apiaries over a summer, identifying the floral origins of honey and hive-stored pollen samples by DNA-metabarcoding. We recorded the available flowering plants and analyzed the specialized metabolites in honey. Overall, we find that honeybees use mostly the same plants for both nectar and pollen, yet per colony less than half of the plant genera are used for both nectar and pollen at a time. Across samples, on average fewer plant genera were used for pollen, but the composition was more variable among samples, suggesting higher selectivity for pollen sources. Of the available flowering plants, honeybees used only a fraction for either nectar or pollen foraging. The time of summer guided the plant choices the most, and the location impacted both the plants selected and the specialized metabolite composition in honey. Thus, honeybees are selective for both nectar and pollen, implicating a need of a wide variety of floral resources to choose an optimal diet from.