Antagonism of Apis mellifera and Melipona beecheii for the sources of feeding

Abstract

The competition is defined as the interrelation among species that influence negatively in the abundance or the growth of the population of an or both species. They can be defined two competition types: competition of exploitation for the use of a resource shared as the food and the competition by interference when decreases the efficiency of exploitation of another species for the competition for the territory. With the objective of determining the possible antagonism of A. mellifera and M. beecheii for the source of pollen, the origin of the pollen stored in the reservations of foods of the beehives of A. mellifera and M. beecheii through palinologic analysis carried out to samples of pollen of both species of bees settled down. The diversity of pollen found in the samples is superior in A. mellifera with regard to M. beecheii being Mimosa pudica and Mimosa pigra the identified species with a high frequency. On the other hand, 71,4% of the vegetable identified species coincides in the pollen found in the samples of A. mellifera and M. beecheii, being a half similarity among the grains of pollen of the beehives of both species expressed by a coefficient of similarity of Jaccard 0,5219.