A Geospatial atlas of honey bee forage plants and their distribution patterns in Africa and beyond

Publication Type

Journal Article

Journal Name

Scientific Reports

Publication Date

12-1-2025

Abstract

Honey bee forage plants are essential for bee nutrition and wellbeing, and they also sustain multifunctional landscapes that support human livelihoods and biodiversity. Despite the critical need to conserve them, information on their identity and distribution across Africa remains limited. Through a systematic literature review, we compiled the first continental database of 1,248 honey bee forage plant species from 91 families and retrieved 1,572,790 occurrence records of these species from open-access biodiversity databases like iNaturalist and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). The database includes native and exotic species, with georeferenced records from Africa and beyond. An interactive web-based dashboard accompanies the database, allowing users to visualize species distributions. The dashboard reveals floral report gaps in Western, Central and Northern Africa, helping inform future conservation priorities. In Southern and Eastern Africa where considerable data exists, this resource promotes pollinator-friendly land management practices, supporting honey bees and other pollinators vital for ecosystem resilience. Overall, this resource provides a foundation for future integration with high-resolution imagery, climate models and field-collected data on plant-pollinator interactions to contextualize species distributions under varying land-use and climatic conditions. It offers a valuable tool to support pollinator conservation and climate-resilient strategies for agriculture and beekeeping across Africa.

Keywords

Apis mellifera, Citizen science, Forage plants, Web-based visualization dashboard

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