CONTEXT IS KEY: TOOLS FOR ADAPTING BEEKEEPING PRACTICES TO DIVERSE LANDSCAPES

Many recent studies have demonstrated the importance of land use to honey bee colony survival, growth and honey production. However, the results of these studies are often conflicting, and land use patterns are typically defined in terms that are not generalizable or relatable to the key stressors known to impact bees. Thus, it is not currently possible to predict a colony's health and productivity based on its landscape context. Furthermore, beekeeping practices greatly impact colony outcomes, including altering a colony's resilience to these landscape-based stressors. In this proposal, we will develop generalizable, ecologically-relevant indices that comprehensively describe landscape context in terms of the key stressors impacting honey bees (forage quality, pesticide use, climatic severity, and managed bee population density). Using beekeeper-supplied data, we will evaluate how landscape context and beekeeping practices interface to predict colony health, size (which is critical for pollination) and honey production. We will use these results to generate decision support tools that beekeepers and land managers can use to evaluate (1) the quality of their landscapes (2) the impacts of different beekeeping practices on colony health and productivity in these landscape contexts. We will integrate these decision support tools into an adaptive management framework to ensure our data and models are continuously refined, building on an existing online portal developed by coPD Lonsdorf (Pollination Mapper). These studies will provide critical information for beekeepers and land managers across the United States, and these tools and resources can readily be expanded to include populations of wild pollinators.