Department of Plant Pollination

Researches on plant-bee relationships, that is problems related to the pollination of plants and bee forage are carried out in the Department of Plant Pollination.
They concern not only honeybees but also wild bees - naturally occurring pollinators. The subject of many works is the knowledge of their biology, collocation, and food plants determination by pollen analysis of pollen loads and pollen provisions in the nests. There are also elaborated methods of breeding solitary bees and bumble bees to increase their numbers in nature and for using in studies of their usefulness for field crops, orchards and greenhouse cultivations pollination.
Our successes are the multiplication of the population Osmia rufa and their introduction to the pollination of orchards, strawberry and highbush blueberry cultivations. There was also elaborated year-round method of bumblebee rearing (Bombus terrestris) used for pollination of greenhouse crops.
Work from the area of the bee-botany concentrate on the estimation of beekeeping value of chosen species of plants for bees and estimation of pollination requirements of new varieties of cultivated plants. Results of these researches are used to elaborating of the set of species to the improvement of bee forage for Apiformes. We also has collection about 300 species of bee plant (still extended for new species) as the natural source of gene resources and material for spreading among bee-keepers.