Foraging behaviour of honey bees on sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum Linn.) under natural field conditions
Vikash Kumar Sankhala, Varsha Phanan and Suman Maurya
Studies on diversity on insect pollinators sweet basil was carried out at Instructional Farm, Rajasthan College of Agriculture, MPUAT, Udaipur. In the present study, the insect pollinator diversity was recorded during the flowering period from 21/08/2017 to 29/10/2017 on sweet basil. The major insect pollinators belonged to 5 different orders: Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, Diptera and Hemiptera that were observed during different hours of the day. The foraging activity of most pollinators was recorded maximum during 12:00 to 14:00 hours of the day. The time spent by individual forager honeybee ranged from 25.00 to 76.67 seconds per flower during the flowering period. The maximum time spent per flower was 76.67 seconds per flower during 36th SMW during this week. The number of flowers visited per plant ranged from 2.45 to 6.60.