Anthropogenic landscapes challenge the skills and traits animals have evolved over millions of years: how to cope with changing land structures, new chemicals, extended heatwaves or unexpectedly longer rainy seasons? The current worldwide concern regarding the decline in insect diversity, including pollinators, results from the same challenges: pesticide exposure, deforestation, monocultures, and climate change. Honeybees (Apis mellifera) live in colonies of thousands of individuals, and as they forage for their colony, they provide us with pollination services crucial for many important crops. But in our modern world, honeybees might no longer find enough food, resulting in nutritional stress linked to increased susceptibility to infections and parasites. Here, we investigated the impact of land use on bee nutrition, health, and communication over two years. We collected data on nutritional diversity, the role of dance communication, levels of pesticide exposure and bee health status from 54 beehives at 18 different locations (urban to agricultural land use gradient) in the southwest of UK. I will present results on the impact of land use on two aspects of the study: 1) the bee nutritional diversity (nectar quality-quantity and pollen metabarcoding analysis) and 2) the value of dance communication in relation to these changing land-use covers. The work will help us understand the strength of land-use cover impact on bees' foraging biology, which directly links to their health and its ecological impact.
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