Abstract: A comparative study was made on the flower-visiting behavior and pollination ecology of Apis mellifera, Bombus hypocrita, and Bombus terrestris on greenhouse strawberry in Beijing. As for A. mellifera, the temperature at which the bee left nest, temperature for initial working, visiting duration on a single flower, and time interval between visiting two flowers were all significantly higher (P<0.01), compared with B. hypocrita or B. terrestris, while the latter two bee species had no significant differences in these behaviors (P>0.05). The proportion of the pollens carried to the nest by the three bee species ranked as A. mellifera > B. hypocrita > B. terrestris, and the activity of the pollens carried by the bees ranked as A. mellifera > B. hypocrita = B. terrestris. The initial working time of B. hypocrita and B. terrestris was earlier than that of A. mellifera, and the working time within a day was longer for B. hypocrita and B. terrestris than for A. mellifera. B. terrestris had the highest working frequency within a day (P<0.01). The nutritional quality of the fruits via the pollination by the three bee species showed no significant difference (P>0.05) with the control, but after the pollination, the strawberry had a lower rate of malformed fruit and a higher single fruit weight than the control. The strawberry visited by B. hypocrita and B. terrestris had a lower rate of malformed fruit than that visited by A. mellifera (P>0.05). For the pollination of greenhouse strawberry, native bumble bee species B. hypocrita could be effectively used in place of introduced A. mellifera or B. terrestris.

Key words: Diversity, Rice variety, Magnaporthe grisea, Lineage