Foraging duration of pollinators and their movement on Ricinus communis

Abstract

An experiment was conducted at CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar in order to find out the foraging duration of different insect pollinators of castor crop for two years of study. Results indicated the industrious nature of social bees when compared to other pollinators which worked about 10.20, 10.14, 10.39, 09.22 hours in a day in case of A. dorsata, A. cerana, A. mellifera, A. florea. In this study A. mellifera, was showing highest working hours while Polistes sp. was lowest working period. It also noticed that percent of movement of bee species between flowers of two sexes i.e. male to male flowers was more as compare to male to female flowers. During the two consecutive year 2018 and 2019, among the four honey bee species, A. florea had highest percent of movement between flowers, male to male flowers for both of the castor hybrids.