Relation between honey bee abundance and wild bee communities in Moroccan agro-ecosystems

The expansion of entomophilous crops over the last decades has been accompanied by a growing demand for managed honey bee colonies to provide pollination service. The massive introduction of honey bee in agro-ecosystems has raised concerns about a negative effect on wild bee communities. Here we assess following a standardised sampling the relation between honey bee abundance and wild bee abundance/species richness in six pollinator dependent crops across 201 sites in four different regions in Morocco and during two consecutive years. We also evaluate how multi-croping can modulate the impact of honey bee on wild bees. Our results show that wild bee abundance and richness were not influenced by honey bee abundance regardless of the crop. The response of wild bees to honey bee did not vary between monoculture fields and fields with additional marketable plants. These findings suggest that the current Moroccan agro-ecosystems are not experiencing a strong competition between wild and honey bees and they might co-exist even in the absence of additional habitat plants. However, the effect of honey bee on wild bees remains context-dependent, and we therefore urge caution when generalizing the results.