Interactions on floral resources between the Africanized honey bee Apis mellifera L and the native bee community (Hymenoptera: Apoidea) in a natural "cerrado' ecosystem in southeast Brazil

Abstract

Interactions between Apis mellifera and the native bee community, in regrowth cerrado with typical open-scrub vegetation and tropical climate, at Cajuru, Sao Paulo State, were analysed for relative abundance, phenology and flower visits. Individuals representing 192 species and six families of Apoidea, visited 140 of the 184 plant species sampled in the area. A. mellifera, the second most abundant bee species, was present in a small proportion of the floral sources visited by bees, some of them not primarily melittophilous. Most of the Anthophoridae, Halictidae and Megachilidae exploited plants not visited by A. mellifera. Even the Meliponinae, the most similar in morphological and behavioral attributes to A. mellifera overlapped with Apis on few plant species. -from Authors