TU Professor Wins Fulbright Scholarship To Study Bee Foraging Habits in Pakistan

Monday, January 08, 2001

University of Tulsa biology professor Harrington Wells has been awarded a $25,000 Fulbright scholarship to study the foraging habits of honeybees in Pakistan. Wells will be working with the Ministry of Agriculture in Islamabad.

Wells will be in Pakistan from January through June, 2001. His wife and children will accompany him.

“I will study the foraging decisions of the honeybees and compare the results to data obtained on honeybees in the United States,” says Wells, who conducted similar research in India in 1990 and 1995. He will also present seminars to Ministry of Agriculture research groups and replicate experiments performed on Africanized bees in Mexico.

Wells will study the bees using artificial flower patches. Each “flower” has a wood dowel as a stem and on the top has a matchbook-size plastic platform with a small hole into which sugar water is added. Observers nearby can record the color-preference of the bees, which are tagged with an identifying mark, as they arrive to collect the man-made nectar.

Wells hopes to determine the role that honeybee predators, such as wasps, and competition among honeybee species play in foraging habits. Only one species of honeybees inhabits the United States, but three species are present in Pakistan.

He believes competition among bees and the presence of predators may affect the choice of flowers from which to collect nectar. Bees may use a “get in and get out” strategy -- collecting nectar quickly -- or a “maximum reward” approach of seeking flowers with the most nectar. His findings could lead to a better understanding of pollination ecology, the decision-making process of insects, and group and individual benefits derived from living in a colony. Results may also aid agriculture through increased pollination efficiency.

The Fulbright program, which is funded by Congress, is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.