Heathlands provide vital foraging resources for wild bumblebees, as well as managed honeybees that are brought to heathlands in late summer for heather honey production. With this increased honeybee activity, there is potential for competition for floral resources between honeybees and bumblebees. We studied how increasing number of honeybee hives in Irish upland heathlands, influenced honeybee abundance, nectar availability and bumblebee abundance, size and activity at two distances from the honeybee hives. This dataset contains all data collected, and associated R script used for analysis.
Funding
Eva Crane Trust (ECTA_20170910_Burns
Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship, in partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency (Project ID: GOIPG/2018/3411)
Swedish Research Council Formas (Grant Number: 2018-01466)