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Diff — Honey bee competition with native pollinators

Comparing rev 2 → rev 3

	{{infobox
	\| title = Honey bee competition with native pollinators
	\| mechanism = Scramble competition for nectar and pollen
	\| scale = One colony fields tens of thousands of foragers
	\| evidence = Mixed overall, but consistent negative effects at high hive density
	\| key_studies = Henry & Rodet 2018 · Mallinger et al. 2017 · Valido et al. 2019
	\| most_affected = Specialist and ground-nesting solitary bees; bumblebees
	}}

-	Competition between managed honey bees and wild native bees is the oldest and best-studied of the ecological objections to keeping near wildlands. The mechanism is simple scramble competition**: a honey bee colony is an industrial foraging operation — tens of thousands of workers, communication dances, and pollen stores measured in kilograms per year — foraging the same flowers as [[native bees of North America\|native bees]] that are mostly solitary, mostly small, and often specialized on exactly those plants.[[cite: Cane & Tepedino 2017; foraging-biology literature]]
+	Competition between managed honey bees and wild native bees is the oldest and best-studied of the ecological objections to keeping Apis mellifera near wildlands. The mechanism is simple scramble competition: a honey bee colony is an industrial foraging operation — tens of thousands of workers, communication dances, and pollen stores measured in kilograms per year — foraging the same flowers as [[native bees of North America\|native bees]] that are mostly solitary, mostly small, and often specialized on exactly those plants.[[cite: Cane & Tepedino 2017; foraging-biology literature]]

	## The scale problem

	The arithmetic is the part that surprises most readers. A single colony consumes tens of kilograms of nectar and on the order of 10–25 kg of pollen per year; apiaries rarely come in singles. When Henry and Rodet experimentally added an apiary to a protected area in France and tracked visitation, wild-bee foraging on the preferred flowers dropped measurably — direct evidence that added hives deplete the shared resource rather than merely coexist with it.[[cite: Henry & Rodet 2018]]

	The effect compounds over distance too: honey bees forage kilometers from the hive, so an apiary's footprint is not the fence around it but the landscape around it — which is why the debate concentrates on apiaries placed in or beside protected habitat.[[cite: foraging-range studies; protected-area apiary policy literature]]

	## What the reviews actually say

	The scientific literature is careful, and the honest summary is: effects are real, context-dependent, and worst at high density. Mallinger, Gaines-Day and Gratton's 2017 review of the evidence found documented negative effects on wild bees in a substantial share of studies — resource depletion and altered foraging chief among them — while noting gaps and counter-findings. Work since has tilted the same direction: island studies in the Canaries found honey bees suppressed wild-pollinator visitation; urban analyses find floral resources already limiting, so added urban hives compete for what little bloom a city offers.[[cite: Mallinger et al. 2017; Valido et al. 2019; Ropars et al. urban-forage analyses]]

	The consistent pattern across the better-controlled studies:

	* Abundance: wild-bee visits per flower fall where apiary density rises
	* Behavior: remaining wild bees shift to less-preferred flowers or shorter visits
	* Condition: heavy competition correlates with reduced reproductive output in some solitary and bumblebee studies
	* Asymmetry: the losers are not the honey bees — managed colonies are fed when forage fails

	## Not the only axis

	Resource competition interlocks with the other documented harms rather than standing alone: shared flowers are also the transmission route for [[pathogen spillover in bees\|pathogen spillover]], the weeds that benefit are covered under [[honey bees and invasive plants\|invasive-plant pollination]], and the nest-cavity dimension belongs to the [[feral honey bee]] story.[[cite: Geldmann & González-Varo 2018; Graystock flower-pathogen work]]

	## The policy edge

	Precisely because the evidence is density-dependent, the practical conclusion is narrower than "no hives anywhere": apiary stocking limits near sensitive habitat, registration and density caps in protected areas, and — the recurring theme — the recognition that a honey bee hive is a unit of livestock, not a conservation device. European regulators have begun formalizing this; North American park and refuge policy is further behind.[[cite: Geldmann & González-Varo 2018; protected-area apiary policy discussions]]

	## References

	- Henry & Rodet — apiary-addition field experiment (2018)
	- Mallinger, Gaines-Day & Gratton — evidence review, PLOS ONE (2017)
	- Valido et al. — Canary Islands exclusion experiments (2019)
	- Geldmann & González-Varo — "Conserving honey bees does not help wildlife," Science (2018)
	- Cane & Tepedino — pollination context for native bees (2017)

	## See also

	* [[Native bees of North America]] · [[Honey bees in North America]]
	* [[Pathogen spillover in bees]] · [[Honey bees and invasive plants]]
	* [[Feral honey bee]] · [[Save the bees]]

	[[Category:Nature]]
	[[Category:Science]]