No statistical evidence that honey bees competitively reduced wild bee abundance in the Munich Botanic Garden—a comment on Renner et al. (2021)

Urban Farm DB summary

A re-analysis of the observations behind Renner et al. (2021), which had concluded that an increase in managed honey bee hives between 2019 and 2020 intensified competition with non-Apis bees in the Munich Botanic Garden, Germany. The comment shows that the change in hive numbers did not statistically alter honey bee visitation to 29 plant species either within or between years, so the shift in the proportion of non-Apis bees among visitors is better explained as a response to reduced overall floral resource availability in 2020. The claim that urban beekeeping suppresses native pollinators is therefore supported by some observational studies and contested by re-analyses that find the statistical basis insufficient.