Why honeybees are poor pollinators of a mass-flowering plant: Experimental support for the low pollen quality hypothesis

Abstract

Premise: Honeybees dominate the flower-visitor assemblages of many plant species, yet their efficiency in terms of the quality of pollen delivered to stigmas is largely unknown. We investigated why honeybees are poor pollinators of Aloe ferox, a self-incompatible succulent treelet with large numbers of flowers. Honeybees are very frequent visitors to flowers of this species, yet contribute very little to seed production.

Methods: We assessed pollen loads on honeybees, studied their visitation behavior, selectively excluded birds from plants to determine direct effects of bees on pollen deposition, seed set, and ovule abortion, and used a novel "split-pollinator" method to test whether honeybees deposit mainly low-quality self pollen. For the latter, we captured honeybees, and with their existing pollen loads, used them to either pollinate virgin flowers on the plant on which they were caught or to pollinate virgin flowers on different plants.

Results: Honeybees cumulatively deposit as much pollen on stigmas as do birds, but our experiments showed that the pollen deposited by honeybees is mostly low-quality self pollen that leads to substantial ovule discounting and depressed seed set.

Conclusions: Lack of movement among A. ferox plants during individual honeybee foraging bouts is the most likely explanation for their deposition of low-quality self pollen on stigmas. The "split-pollinator" method is a simple and cost-effective technique to test the quality of pollination.

Keywords: Aloe ferox; Apis mellifera; flower constancy; geitonogamy; late-acting self-incompatibility; mass-flowering; ovule discounting; pollen grooming; pollen quality; pollinator effectiveness; single visit effectiveness.