Apis mellifera plays a crucial role as pollinator of the majority of crops to food production and thus its presence is currently fundamental to our and survival. The composition and configuration of the landscape in Apis mellifera lives will likely determine the well-being of the hives the pollination service that their members can provide to the crops. Here present a spatially explicit model that predicts the spatial distribution of by Apis mellifera to crops, by simulating daily trips of honey bees, the dynamic of each hive and their honey production. This model goes existing approaches by including 1) a flower resource affected by the interaction between nectar extraction, pollination, blossoming and visits, 2) a pollinators dynamic that allows competition through short resource depletion, 3) a probabilistic approach of the foraging behavior, the fact that the pollinators have only partial knowledge of the on their surroundings, and 4) the specific and systematic foraging and strategies of Apis mellifera at the moment of choosing foraging, as opposed to those adopted by solitary and wild pollinators. With a between simplicity and realism we show the importance of keeping a fraction of natural habitat in an agricultural landscape. We also the effects of the landscape's structure on pollination, and that there exists an optimal size of natural habitat patches that the pollination service for a fixed fraction of natural habitat.
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Joseph et al. (2019) studied this question.