Abundance of flower visitors and their foraging behaviour in niger

Abstract

The experiment was undertaken at college farm of Navsari Agricultural University, Navsari during Kharif, 2016. Insect flower visitors/pollinators were recorded at time periods starting from 06.00 to 18.00 h. The niger flowers were found to be visited by three species of honey bees viz., Apis dorsata F., A. florea F., A. cerana F. as well as sting less bees, dipteran flies, lepidopterans and hemipteran bugs. Among different bee species, A. dorsata was the predominant flower visitors (9.33 bees/m2/5minute) constituting 60.74 per cent of total flower visitors which was followed by A. florea (2.30 bees/m2/5 minute) and A. cerana (1.17 bees/m2/5 minute) constituting 14.97 and 7.62 per cent of total flower visitors, respectively. The mean activity of flower visitors was more at 11 00 h (54.29 visitors/m2/5 minute) followed by at 10 00 h (42.24 visitors/m2/5 minute). Considering the activity of different visitors at different days of observation (irrespective of the hour of the day) indicated that the maximum activity was observed in third week of flowering (26.56 visitors/m2/5 minute) followed by fourth week of flowering (19.87 visitors/m2/5 minute). Due to self-incompatible nature of niger flower, insect pollinators are the more importance in increasing productivity of niger.