Diversity and foraging behaviour of insect pollinators in Cauliflower

Cauliflower is a cross-pollinated crop and honey bees play an important role in its pollination. In the current study, we studied we studied diversity and foraging behavior of floral visitors to floral visitors along with their visitation rate, frequency during 2019 and 2020. The data were collected at 0800–1000 hours (early morning foraging activity), 1000-1200 hours (late morning foraging activity), 1200-1400 hours (Noon foraging activity) and 1400-1600 hours (afternoon foraging activity). The results revealed that seven species of bees, five flies and three wasp species on the flowers of cauliflower. Apis mellifera, Apis dorsata and Apis florea were the dominant pollinator species with 162-214, 126-164, and 82-136 individuals, respectively in both years. The maximum foraging activity of the dominant pollinators was observed at 14:00 hrs followed by 12:00 hrs whereas the minimum foraging activity was recorded in the early morning hours 08:00. Floral visitors differed significantly in term of visitation frequency with A. mellifera as the most frequent visitor (14.00–15.37 visits/flower/5 min) followed by A. dorsata (7.50–8.90 visits/flower/5 min) and A. florea (9.80–10.63 visits/ flower/5 min) in both years. Similarly, A. mellifera had statistically highest visitation rate (26.93–27.40 flowers visited/min) followed by A. dorsata (12.62–15.13 flowers visited/min) and A. florea (15.93-16.00 flowers visited/min). The results suggested A. mellifera, A. dorsata and A. florea could be effective pollinators of cauliflower. Therefore, these three species can be effectively used on a commercial scale to increase crop yield.