Honeybees Crowd Wild Pollinators Off Flowers, UK Study Finds

Cambridge: Managed honeybees are routinely pushing wild bees, hoverflies and other pollinators off flowers in their search for nectar and pollen, a new study from England has found. In many cases they do it without any physical contact.

Researchers led by Victoria Buckle, a PhD student at Anglia Ruskin University, watched bramble and ivy flowers over two years at five sites in and around Cambridge. All the sites were close to known honeybee colonies. Across 93 hours of observation, the team recorded 300 encounters in which one insect disrupted another’s access to a flower. For each one, they noted which insect arrived first, how each behaved and which one stayed to feed.

Honeybees won more than half of their encounters with other kinds of insects on both plants. Most of these wins involved no contact at all: the other insect simply moved away and left the flower to the honeybee. Some encounters were more aggressive. In at least a fifth of honeybee wins, the honeybee chased off a rival or physically removed it.

The researchers also found fewer wild pollinators where honeybees were more numerous. On bramble, a doubling of honeybee density was linked to roughly 14 per cent fewer bumblebees. The authors caution that this pattern does not prove honeybees caused the decline. Wild insects may avoid patches where food has already been depleted, or avoid the honeybees themselves. On ivy, the number of flowers in a patch explained wild insect numbers better than honeybee numbers did.

Honeybees did not always come out on top. Ivy bees, a wild species that specialises in ivy pollen, often held their ground. When a solitary bee arrived at an ivy flower already occupied by a honeybee, the honeybee kept its place in only five of 19 encounters. Size was not decisive either. Bumblebees, the largest insects observed, and honeybees displaced each other at similar rates.

The study did not track whether displaced insects found food elsewhere, or whether losing access to flowers affected their survival or reproduction. The researchers say the key next question is whether repeated displacement leaves wild pollinators short of food overall.

The findings come as beekeeping grows in popularity. Registered beekeepers in the UK rose from 19,000 in 2010 to 47,000 in 2025, according to the National Bee Unit. Buckle said the research was not intended to discourage beekeeping. Its purpose, she said, was to understand how wild and managed pollinators compete, so that wild species, which play a vital ecological role, can be better protected. The researchers say helping pollinators means making sure wild insects also have enough flowers to feed on as managed honeybee numbers grow.