Impact of commercial honey bees in protected natural areas has in recent years concerned conservationists around the world, but accurately quantifying and interpreting indirect interactions and resource overlap has been limited by traditional and labor intensive methods. For my phd, focusing primarily on wild bees in protected areas in relation to commercial beekeeping, we have conducted studies in heathlands and calcareous grasslands using traditional and modern methods to assess competition.

Heathlands, semi-natural areas dominated by dwarf shrubs, are attractive destinations for migratory beekeepers in the late summer during the flowering of heather (Calluna vulgaris), resulting in dense aggregations of apiaries. In our study, we used 40 time-lapse cameras and image recognition to measure activity patterns of pollinators on heather across space and time during the full flowering period of heather. On calcareous grasslands, semi-natural grasslands rich in plants and pollinators, we introduced beehives to investigate the resource overlap between wild bees and honey bees within the diverse flora using DNA metabarcoding. The presented methods are increasingly used in ecological studies and here we present how it can be applied in pollinator conservation and apicultural research.