Honeybees Directly Displace Wild Pollinators, Cambridgeshire Study Finds

The study observed pollinators over a two-year period as they foraged on bramble and ivy near honeybee colonies. It documented 300 interactions among honeybees, bumblebees, solitary bees, hoverflies and an "other" group that included flower-visiting flies, butterflies, beetles and wasps. For each encounter, researchers recorded whether an individual won access to a resource, lost it, or shared it. Honeybees won most encounters on both plant species.

Past research suggested that honeybees outcompete other pollinators indirectly by using up resources. The Cambridgeshire study says it provides evidence of "interference competition", in which a species attacks or chases others away. "That’s important because, of course, it means that the wild pollinators are facing a challenge from both those types of competition from honeybees," said Victoria Buckle, lead author of the study and a PhD researcher at Anglia Ruskin University.

Other flower visitors actively avoided honeybees in 28.4% of interactions on bramble and 35.6% on ivy. In competitive interactions won by a honeybee, the honeybee displaced other flower visitors — for example, by landing on them or pushing them off flowers — or chased them away in about 20% of cases. Bumblebees were also observed displacing other pollinators, though Buckle said this was probably not intentional and reflected their less coordinated movements in confined spaces. "They bumble along the patch and then they’ll mistakenly bump into another pollinator and it just falls off a flower," she said. "With the honeybees, the aggression was more overt. You could tell that they’re specifically trying to move the other one off the flower."

Buckle said the honeybees’ aggressive behavior probably relates to how they organize their social groups. "Some castes of bees can be guard bees, so they have that capacity within them to show threat and aggression, to guard their hives and to look after the brood," she said.

The only pollinator able to hold its own against honeybees was the ivy bee, which was first recorded in the UK in 2001 and feeds mainly on the nectar of ivy flowers. It was seen displacing and chasing honeybees. The study also found that higher temperatures led to an increased number of competitive interactions, probably because nectar was drying up and plants were going into heat stress. Buckle said mean summer temperatures in the UK are predicted to rise by up to 4C by 2080, making such competition likely to become more frequent. More research is needed on how wild pollinators can be better protected, she added.

The number of managed honeybees has risen in the UK as campaigns to "save the bees" have resonated with the public, leading to a boom in hobbyists setting up beehives. The number of registered beekeepers more than doubled from 19,000 in 2010 to 47,000 in 2025, according to the National Bee Unit. There are growing concerns that the growth in managed honeybees is harming wild pollinators by increasing competition for food and spreading disease, especially in areas where there are fewer flowers or a high density of hives.

Buckle said many beekeepers are environmentally minded and want to make sure they are not affecting other pollinators. "This research is important because it helps guide our planning and best practices for conservation," she said.

Editor's Summary

The study adds evidence that honeybees can directly displace wild pollinators at flowers, not only consume shared resources. It comes as managed beekeeping has expanded in the UK, and researchers say warmer summers could increase such encounters. The authors call for more research on protecting wild pollinators.