Geographic distances between pairs of wild bumblebee colonies across an agricultural landscape centred on the Hillesden Estate, Buckinghamshire, UK. Colony locations were estimated using the foraging locations of workers sampled in summer 2011, genotyped and grouped into full-sib families. The spatial structure of five Bombus species (Bombus terrestris, B. lapidarius, B. pascuorum, B. hortorum and B. ruderatus) was determined, with inter-colony distances varying from 7 to 5264 metres. Data were collected as part of a project led by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, funded under the Insect Pollinators Initiative.
Publication date: 2014-05-08
This dataset is part of the following
Worker bumblebee DNA was sampled non-lethally, stored, extracted, genotyped and individuals assigned to full-sib groups (colonies) using recognised standard protocols. Spatial locations of colonies and inter-colony separation distances were generated in ArcGIS and backed up as Excel files. Data were checked for errors at all stages by staff at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and at the Institute of Zoology.