Abelhas visitantes florais de Vernonia polyanthes Less (Asteraceae), em Valença-RJ

Abstract

Vernonia polyanthes Less. popularly known as “assa-peixe”, “assa-peixe branco” or “cambará”, belongs to the “Asteraceae” family and it´s very used by the popular medicine on the treatment of coughs, bronchitis, bruises, hemorrhoids, colds and uterine infections. V. polyanthes is very visited by many species of bees, principally by native ones, that look for food resources. Besides the native bees that are responsible for even 90% of pollination of the native vegetables, Apis mellifera looks for food resources in those vegetables too. This specie, was introduced in Brazil during the colonial period. We don´t known yet about the consequences of the introduction of this specie over the native bees communities, once there is little work accomplished with that purpose. This work has an objective of knowing the principal flora visitors of V. polyanthes and the interactions between the bees communities. The work was done in Valença municipal district-RJ, in an area with 15 beehives of A. mellifera. Four collections were accomplished with entomological net with 10 minutes of duration in each hour from 08 a.m to 04 p.m, once a week from June to August 2009. It were collected 771 bees from 03 families and 22 species. The more abundant species were A. mellifera, T. spinipes and S. quadripunctata. The social bees represented 98% of the total in relation to lonely ones with only 2%. From the 22 species, A. mellifera and T. spinipes were dominant in the exploration of resources over the other bee species. A great similarity about the exploration of food resources happened between A. mellifera, T. spinipes and S. quadripunctata, possibly for being happening a competition between those species. The low diversity of bees could be influenced by abundant quantity of A.mellifera. This work has found one of the biggest number of meliponíneos species collected in the state of Rio de Janeiro.