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Honey bee food resources under threat from climate change

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Abstract

Plant-pollinator interactions are essential for plant productivity but face growing threats from climate change, including vegetation loss and mismatches in flowering. Yet, the consequences for bee food resources remain poorly understood at continental scales. Here, we analyse 2 500 samples collected by honey bees (Apis mellifera) between May and August 2023 from 310 locations across Europe using ITS2 metabarcoding. We derive climatic response curves of floral resources and assess exceedance risks of interaction loss under projected climate scenarios. Our findings reveal that rising temperatures and reduced precipitation decrease the diversity of foraging resources across Europe, pushing many plants beyond critical limits. When both warming and drying coincide, the potential for resilience through temporal or spatial buffering is strongly constrained. These declines pose serious risks to bee nutrition, ecosystem functioning, and food security. Our study underscores the urgency of mitigating climate change to preserve vital plant-pollinator systems and the services they sustain.

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Data availability

The raw sequencing data generated in this study have been deposited in the NCBI SRA database under accession code PRJNA1198597. The processed sequencing data (for process see code availability), climate data, and metadata of samples are available at Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.17578272 [https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17578272]77 and GitHub chiras/HoneyBee-ResistanceResilience [https://github.com/chiras/HoneyBee-ResistanceResilience].

Code availability

The pipeline for processing raw sequencing data for metabarcoding is publicly available at GitHub chiras/metabarcoding_pipeline [https://github.com/chiras/metabarcoding_pipeline]. Code for all downstream analyses is publicly available at Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.17578272 [https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17578272]77 and GitHub chiras/HoneyBee-ResistanceResilience [https://github.com/chiras/HoneyBee-ResistanceResilience]. All display items presented in the main manuscript and supplementary information can be reproduced from this public data and code.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all Citizen Scientists and National Coordinators from the 27 EU countries for their invaluable contributions to pollen sampling. We also acknowledge Maíra Costa, Maria Celenza, and Maria João Caldeira for their assistance with pollen homogenisation and DNA extractions. The Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) supported A.Q.‘s PhD scholarship (2020.05155.BD; DOI: 10.54499/2020.05155.BD). FCT provided financial support through national funds to CIMO and SusTEC via FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC): CIMO under UIDB/00690/2020 (DOI: 10.54499/UIDB/00690/2020) and UIDP/00690/2020 (DOI: 10.54499/UIDP/00690/2020); and SusTEC, under LA/P/0007/2020 (DOI: 10.54499/LA/P/0007/2020). This work was conducted within the framework of INSIGNIA-EU: Preparatory action for monitoring of environmental pollution using honey bees (European Union service contract 09.200200/2021/864096/SER/ ENV.D.2).

Funding

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

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Author notes

  1. These authors jointly supervised this work: M. Alice Pinto, Alexander Keller.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CIMO, LA SusTEC, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Campus de Santa Apolónia, Bragança, Portugal

    Andreia Quaresma & M. Alice Pinto

  2. Departamento de Biologia, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Andreia Quaresma

  3. CIBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, InBIO Laboratório Associado, Campus de Vairão, Universidade do Porto, Vila do Conde, Portugal

    Andreia Quaresma

  4. BIOPOLIS Program in Genomics, Biodiversity and Land Planning, CIBIO, Campus de Vairão, Vila do Conde, Portugal

    Andreia Quaresma

  5. Wageningen Environmental Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands

    Johannes M. Baveco & Willem Bastiaan Buddendorf

  6. Department of Biology, University of Graz, Universitätsplatz 2, Graz, Austria

    Robert Brodschneider, Kristina Gratzer & Ivo Roessink

  7. Carreck Consultancy Ltd, Shipley, West Sussex, UK

    Norman L. Carreck

  8. Department of Apiculture, Institute of Animal Science ELGO ‘DIMITRA’, Nea Moudania, Greece

    Fani Hatjina

  9. Danish Beekeepers Association (DBF), Sorø, Denmark

    Ole Kilpinen & Flemming Vejsnaes

  10. Alveus AB Consultancy, Oisterwijk, Netherlands

    Jozef van der Steen

  11. Cellular and Organismic Networks, Faculty of Biology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Planegg-Martinsried, Germany

    Alexander Keller

Authors

  1. Andreia Quaresma
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  2. Johannes M. Baveco
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  12. M. Alice Pinto
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  13. Alexander Keller
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Contributions

A.Q., A.K., and M.A.P. conceived the ideas and designed the methodology. A.K. and A.Q. conducted the analysis. A.Q., A.K., and M.A.P. drafted the manuscript. Particularly A.Q., M.A.P., A.K., and N.C., but all authors contributed to improving the manuscript. J.B., W.B.B., and I.R. modelled the apiaries’ location. R.B., K.G., F.H., O.K., M.A.P., I.R., F.V., N.C. and JvdS designed the pollen sampling methodology, prepared all the materials and manuals for pollen collection by Citizen Scientists, and obtained the INSIGNIA-EU funding. All the authors critically reviewed the manuscript for important intellectual content.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to
M. Alice Pinto or Alexander Keller.

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Nature Communications thanks Hajnalka Szentgyörgyi, Ellen Rotheray, Pritam Banerjee, and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. A peer review file is available.

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Quaresma, A., Baveco, J.M., Brodschneider, R. et al. Honey bee food resources under threat from climate change.
Nat Commun (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-68085-6

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