Increasing global winds could be causing less flower and plant pollination, with new UK animal behaviour research finding that bees are less likely to take-off in windy conditions resulting in fewer visits to flowers.
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Latest Tasmanian research in this bee behavioural area, which looks at the impacts of orchard farming practices on bee health, is also showing impacts on bees.
The UK research published in Animal Behaviour used fans to create four different wind speeds, which were trained on artificial flowers filled with nectar set up to attract bees.
The number of flower visits, the time spent flying, search time and hesitancy to take off were recorded by researchers, who found that bees visited 3.73 flowers in high winds, compared to 5.4 flowers in no wind.
Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture insect specialist Stephen Quarrell said the research proved what had been observed by scientists for a long time, that bee flight is reduced in high winds.
"The bees have to work a lot harder and they generally forage a lot less. Even if they are able to adapt to the strong winds, they are still bringing less nectar and pollen to the hive, and this impacts on hive health," he said.
"Bees are actively collecting through the spring, summer and autumn, trying to get enough nectar and pollen to create enough foodstores to get themselves through the winter. If they are reducing the amount of food they bring to the hive, then their ability to survive the winter is going to be reduced which will affect their ability to generate our food crops and plants in the environment."
Dr Quarrell said the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture was also actively researching bees, specifically the impact of chemicals and pesticides on honey bee health in carrot crops, and also the impact of rain covers and bird netting in cherry orchards on bee foraging.
Microchips placed on the backs of up to 50,000 bees enabled scientists to track each bees' behaviour over the pollination period, which for cherries was in September, and carrots over six weeks ending this month.
Dr Quarrell said the preliminary data collected from the microchipped bees from the cherry orchards looked promising.
He said such research was important for high investment cherry and berry crops that rely on bees.
"We have seen obvious differences within the bird netting and rain cover trials, where there appears to be some sort of behavioural impact on bee foraging behaviours," he said.
"Understanding how covers and cropping systems impact on bees' health gives us leads to keep them healthy for farming industries to prosper into the future."
