Diversity and Relative Abundance of Solitary Bees on Jatropha Curcas Crop in Sirmour and Solan Hills of Himachal Pradesh, India

Studies on diversity and relative abundance of solitary bee visitors to Jatropha curcas crop was made by collecting the flower visitors in different sites located at Nahan (933 m) of Sirmour hills and Arki (1104 m) of Solan hills of Himachal Pradesh, during the years from 2012-2016. Insect diversity studies showed that Jatropha flowers were visited by 16 species of bees belonging to 4 families of order Hymenoptera of class Insecta. Of these, 7 species belonged to Apidae, 5 to Halictidae, 3 to Megachilidae and 1 to Andrenidae family. Analyses of data on relative abundance of different solitory bee visitors revealed that Xylocopa fenestrata was the most abundant bee visitor to Jatropha flowers in the two experimental sites i. e. Nahan (25.85 %) and Arki (24.84 %). Other important bees pollinators at Nahan and Arki were Ceratina gigantica (21.44 % and 21.04 %), Megachile flaviceps (9.81 % and 9.41 %), Halictus sp. (9.61 %, and 9.21 %) and Andrena sp. (3.20 % and 5.21 %).