Wild Bumblebee Colony Distances Across Buckinghamshire Agricultural Landscape

Inter-colony distances for five Bombus species range from 7 to 5264 meters. Data detail the spatial structure of wild bumblebee colonies across an agricultural landscape in Buckinghamshire, UK, based on worker foraging locations genotyped into full-sib families. The project was led by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and funded under the Insect Pollinators Initiative.

Use Cases

• Model species-specific dispersal patterns using inter-colony distance measurements for Bombus terrestris, B. lapidarius, B. pascuorum, B. hortorum, and B. ruderatus.
• Analyze spatial colony distribution relative to agricultural features using colony location coordinates estimated from worker foraging sites.
• Investigate genetic relatedness and colony density by leveraging the full-sib family groupings derived from genotyped workers.

Strengths

• Provides concrete inter-colony distance measurements ranging from 7 to 5264 meters.
• Includes data for five distinct Bombus species (Bombus terrestris, B. lapidarius, B. pascuorum, B. hortorum, B. ruderatus).
• Colony locations are empirically estimated from genotyped worker foraging data, providing a biological basis for spatial analysis.

Limitations

• Dataset scope is limited to a single agricultural landscape (Hillesden Estate, Buckinghamshire) and one summer (2011), reducing geographic and temporal generalizability.
• Unknown row count and column structure limit assessment of dataset scale and feature completeness.
• Relies on inferred colony locations from worker sampling, which may introduce estimation error compared to direct nest discovery.

Provenance

Source

Environmental Information Data Centre

Collection Method

Colony locations estimated from foraging workers sampled in summer 2011, genotyped and grouped into full-sib families.

Time Range

Summer 2011

Freshness

Data collected in summer 2011, with metadata last updated in 2026.

Geography

Agricultural landscape centred on the Hillesden Estate, Buckinghamshire, UK