Are honey bees more productive when given access to prairie strips?

In areas dominated by agriculture, honey bee (Apis mellifera, Hymenoptera: Apidae) rely on monocultures for pollen and nectar. Access to late-season forage is essential for honey bee colonies where these mass-flowering crops (e.g. soybeans) stop producing flowers before the end of a growing season. A potential source of nutrition that could be used by honey bees are native, perennial flowering plants established through the conservation reserve program. This includes practices like CP 42 (‘pollinator habitat’) and CP 43 (‘prairie strips’). In previous experiments, an apiary of four colonies responded positively to the presence of prairie strips.The purpose of this experiment is to determine if prairie strips improve honey bee productivity for commercial scale beekeeping. In an experiment conducted in central Iowa, we compared colonies kept at either a farm with prairie strips (n=3) or sites selected by professional beekeepers without a prairie strip (n=3) over two summer field seasons. Each site had 24 colonies, four managed by the ISU team (i.e. sentinels) and 20 managed by beekeepers. Sentinel colonies were started from small packages with a shared genetic background and managed following a standard protocol across all sites. Beekeepers managed their colonies per their own practices. Sentinel colonies were heavier at sites selected by beekeepers than those at sites with prairie strips. In this presentation, I will describe how the colonies at these sites differed in seasonal-weight gain, how much honey was harvested, and colony loss over time.