Competitive Effects of Honey Bee (Apis melifera) Hives on Morphology and Morphology-Based Abundance of Bumble Bees (Apidae: Bombus) in an Urban Prairie Landscape (City of Red Deer, Alberta)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis aimed to establish whether there were measurable effects of managed honey bees (Apis melifera) on bumble bee (Bombus) populations in the City of Red Deer, with an intent to aid wild bee conservation in the area as well as decision-making regarding possible legislation of honey bee keeping within the city. A growing body of research has documented the negative effects of managed honey bees on wild bee populations has been accumulating in many regions over several decades, while others are yet undocumented. Competition for floral resources between introduced honey bees and native bumble bees are expected to have the greatest impact on bumble bees of similar morphologies to honey bees, including body size and tongue length. Two pairs of sites (located near to- and far from honey bee hives) were compared for effects on bumble bee body size and abundance relative to tongue length. Contrary to expectations, short-tongued bumble bees (where tongue-length is similar to honey bees) were more abundant in sites near to honey bees and long-tongue bumble bees were less abundant, which does not support our hypothesis. Rather, it suggests a novel disproportionate impact of honey bees on long-tongued bumble bees. The data indicate that current hobby (honey)beekeeping in this municipality is negatively influencing the abundance of bumble bee groups. Discovery of an endangered species (Bombus bohemicus) and a threatened species (Bombus terricola) added to the value of this study. Recommendations for city policy to protect these species, other bumble bees, and wild bees overall, are that honey bee keeping within City limits be limited and regulated, or, preferably, outright prohibited. This project contributes to better understanding of overall bumble bee populations relating to Red Deer’s landscape and may serve as part of a baseline for future research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".