HOW DO WE SELECT WILD BEE SPECIES BEING IMPORTANT TO POLLINATE A

SPECIFIC CROP TOOL1:

THE GOAL:

We want to select the most important bee pollinators for a specific crop in a specific country. To model
the free pollination service present by these wild bees based on the landscape characteristics in the
surrounding landscape (around the crop of interest).

THE PRINCEPLE:

We use observation data to select the wild bees that are most important to pollinate a crop. We left
out the honey bees in our counts, as one we want to: (i) model pollination services of wild bees, or (ii)
select flowers suited to attract wild bees.

The method has some limitations:

-Not each bee that visits a flower is a pollinator. For instance some bumble bees rob nectar without
contacting the stigma of the pistil, or there could mismatch in flower and bee size. If a bee species is
known to visit, but does not pollinate the flower, the bee is removed or a penalty is given to reduce its
importance. All references which proof that a specific bee visitors is not a pollinator of a specific crop,
can be send to ivan.meeus-at-UGent.be.

THE DATABASE:

We use the Crop Pollination Database (accessed 10 June 2021), which gathers data of bee
observation data per field (this is specific crop per country).

It compiles data from > 190 study systems worldwide, comprising > 3000 fields from 49 different
crop species. For details see.

https://github.com/ibartomeus/OBservData

For BEESPOKE we selected the following crops:

Apple, Broad bean, Buckwheat, Sunflower, Pear, Field mustard, Northen Bush Blueberry, Rapeseed,
Raspberry, Red clover, Strawberry, Sweet Cherry.
TOOL1 - HOW DO WE SELECT AN POLLINATOR TO BE IMPORTANT FOR A CROP – AND HOW DO WE
MODEL ALL THESE DIFFERENT SPECIES:

Per crop, per field, per country we calculate the observation power (ObsPow) for each pollinator.

# 𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 per pollinator

𝑂𝑏𝑠𝑃𝑜𝑤(𝑃𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑟) =
𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑒 # 𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑎𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠

We calculate Median(obsPow) per pollinator per country. We do this per country, because the
importance of specific pollinator can be country specific. This allows us to make a ranking of the
importance of each pollinator per country.

The selection of crop and country filters to towards the most import pollinators based on the median
observation power described above.

How do use the raking of the ObsPow on a crop to model pollination services (TOOL 1)?

To model abundance of certain bee in the environment we need three characteristic of a bee. One, is
it a bumble bee which nests above the ground, below the ground or on the ground. Two, is it a solitary
bee which nests above the ground or is it a digger bee. Three, what is the foraging distance of the bee.

We use the Traits database of European Bees of Stuart Roberts to collect these characteristic to be
able to model a species. Yet this potentially results in 2066 bee species to be modelled, when linking
the database with the crop pollination data for the NSR countries and crops of interest we still had 221
species to model. This is nearly impossible. Hence we decided to link each bee with a set characteristics
of a virtual bee. The bee of interest would thus have the same or similar characteristics. In total we
created 7 virtual bees for which pollination service are modelled.

Virtual bees used to calculate bee abundance in a certain environment

-Bombus; Renter bee nesting above the ground; with a middle foraging range (eg. Bombus hypnorum)
-Bombus; Renter bee nesting below the ground; with a high foraging range (eg. Bombus hortorum)
-Bombus; Carder bee ground nesting; with a middle foraging range (eg. Bombus ruderatus)
-Solitary; above ground nesting; with a middle foraging range (eg. Osmia bicornis, foraging distance ~860m)
-Solitary digger with a large foraging range (eg. Andrena labialis)
-Solitary digger with a middle foraging range (eg. Andrena flavipes)
-Solitary digger with a low foraging range (eg. Lasioglossum calceatum)

For bees which cannot be linked with one of these virtual bees are not modelled. We create warnings
for these, and inform how many percent cannot not be modelled. We have created the following
warnings:

Regarding no suitable nest data to categorise a bee:

-digger and above ground nesting
-nests in snail shells
-no data on nesting
-parasite
-parasite on Bombus

Regarding no suitable foraging data (which is based on the ITD of the bees) to categorise a bee:
 -No forage distance information
-estimated foraging distance too high (a ground foraging bumble bee for which the foraging
distance is estimate to be high)
-estimated foraging distance too low (a below ground nesting bumble bee for which the
foraging distance is estimate to be middle; or an above solitary bee with a foraging estimated
to be low).

For the digger bees we divided all bees in a foraging range being low, middle or high. Yet for bees on
the edge of these classes a clear-cut grouping in one class is less trustworthy. Therefore, for bees falling
between two classes, we took grouped them for 25% in the lower class and 75% in the upper class if
closer to the upper class; and 75% in the lower class and in the 25% upper class if closes to the lower
class.

To calculate how important a specific virtual bee is for the pollination of a crop and to decide its
weighing factor in the model we take the summation of the Median(obsPow) of each species being
categorized as a specific virtual bee.

To do this we first calculate the importance of different group we created.

𝑗

𝐼𝑚 − 𝐺𝑖 = 𝐼𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 (𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑝 𝑖) = ∑ Median(obsPow)per pollinator

𝑗=1

i = 19 groups (7 virtual bees to be modelled; 4 groups of digger bees which have a foraging distance which is
rescaled of two virtual bee groups; and 8 warnings)

j = number of bees per falling within the same group.

The four groups of digger bees are rescaled into the in three virtual digger bees based on the how
there foraginging distance mathes (75:25 or 25:75 ratio’s). All bees with warning are grouped in group
to calculate the relative importance with and without bees that cannot be modelled.

𝐼𝑚 − 𝐺𝑖
𝑅𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 (𝑉𝑖𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑏𝑒𝑒 𝑖) =
∑𝑖𝑖=1 𝐼𝑚 − 𝐺𝑖
i = 7 virtual bees

𝐼𝑚 − 𝐺𝑖
𝑅𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 (𝑉𝑖𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑏𝑒𝑒 𝑖) + 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑑 =
(∑𝑖𝑖=1 𝐼𝑚 − 𝐺𝑖 ) + 𝐼𝑚(𝑊)
i = 7 virtual bees
𝑖

𝐼𝑚(𝑊) = ∑(𝐼𝑚 − 𝐺𝑖 )
𝑖=1

i = 8 warnings
We need to be aware that not for each North Sea Region (NSR) country we have enough bee
observation data to make a reliable selection:

How do we correct for this?

Because we use virtual bees when we model the pollination services we can presume that the relative
importance of a virtual bees will mainly remain the same in different NSR countries. For instance if a
digger bee with a small foraging range is important in the UK and the Netherlands to pollinate Apple,
it will also be important in Belgium, the bee species may bee different but the group as a whole remains
the same. Table 1 gives an overview from which countries we use the pollinator data to determine the
main pollinators for a specific crop.

Table 1 : The letters represent a country which has data, and is used to determine the main pollinators
per crop.

CROP

Northern.highbush.blu

Common.sunflower
European.pear

field.mustard
Sweet.cherry

Broad.bean
Strawberry

Buckwheat

Red.clover
Raspberry

Rapeseed
Country

eberry
Apple

S, D,
Belgium B B B B B B B S P F
UK S
B, F, G, N, B, S, B, F, G, S,
Denmark B B B, N B, N S P F D
No, UK UK N, S, UK UK
B, S, S, D,
Germany B G B B, N G B, N S P F
UK UK S
B, S, S, D,
Netherlands B N B N N N S P F
UK UK S
B, S, B, F, G, S, D,
Norway B No B B, N B, N S P F
UK N, S, UK UK S
B, F, G, N,
Sweden B B S B, N S B, N S P F S S
No, UK
D,
UK B UK B UK B, N UK B, N S P F UK
S
B, F, G, N, B, S, B, F, G, S, D,
Poland B B B, N B, N S P F
No, UK UK N, S, UK UK S
B, S, S, D,
France B F B B, N F B, N S P F
UK UK S
B (Belgium), D (Denmark), F (France), G (Germany), Ne (The Netherlands), No (Norway, P (Poland), S
(Sweden) and UK (United Kingdom of Great Britain)