Honey bee nutritional ecology: From physiology to landscapes

Understanding the nutritional ecology of honey bees (Apis mellifera), one of the most important and best-studied pollinators, requires an integrative understanding that spans the physiology of individual bees, colony-level dynamics, and environmental factors. In this review, we provide an overview of the factors affecting honey bee nutrition across these levels of organization with particular emphasis on how environmental threats (climate change, soil degradation, landscape simplification, land use change, and habitat degradation) affect honey bees and colonies. We suggest that each of these environmental threats works to further constrain nutritional availability for honey bees. We highlight future areas of study for nutritional ecology and environmental threats, including particularly wicked problems (issues that are extremely complex to solve given incomplete information and interconnected nature) such as climate change, as an area of emphasis for honey bee conservation.