Study: Honeybees Bump Wild Pollinators Off Flowers — SkimNews
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- Anglia Ruskin University researchers documented 300 competitive interactions over two years in Cambridgeshire on bramble and ivy, finding honeybees won most encounters and actively displaced other flower visitors — by landing on them or pushing them off — in about 20% of cases.
- Honeybees were actively avoided by other flower visitors in 28.4% of interactions on bramble and 35.6% on ivy, and areas with higher honeybee concentrations had fewer wild pollinators including bumblebees, solitary bees and hoverflies.
- The study provides evidence of 'interference competition' — a more direct form of rivalry than the resource depletion previously documented — meaning wild pollinators now face a 'challenge from both those types of competition from honeybees,' lead author Victoria Buckle said.
- Bumblebees also displaced other pollinators, but Buckle said this appeared unintentional, reflecting their clumsy movements in confined spaces rather than the 'more overt' aggression shown by honeybees.
- Ivy bees, first recorded in the UK in 2001, were the only pollinators seen displacing and chasing honeybees.
- UK registered beekeepers more than doubled from 19,000 in 2010 to 47,000 in 2025, according to the National Bee Unit, fueling concerns that the hobbyist boom is amplifying competition and disease transmission to wild species.
- Higher temperatures increased the number of competitive interactions, likely because nectar was drying up — and with UK mean summer temperatures forecast to rise up to 4°C by 2080, such confrontations are 'likely to become more frequent,' Buckle said.
Why it matters: The 'save the bees' movement has helped more than double UK beekeepers since 2010, but this research suggests the managed-hive boom may be actively harming the wild pollinators those campaigns aim to protect — and with UK summers forecast to warm by up to 4°C by 2080, the competitive pressure documented in this study is set to intensify.
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