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Results: More flowers visited per raceme in early season.

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Slide 22 of 31
Notes:

(Figure: Bar Graph)  This is the distribution of numbers of flowers visited per raceme by alfalfa leafcutting bees early in the season when standing crop is hign (in blue) and late in the season when standing crop is low (in red). Most bees visit only one flower per raceme. Early in the season, that’s 57% of the bees. But some bees visit as many as 8 flowers per raceme.
Late in the season, 80% of the bees visit only one flower per raceme, and none visit more than 3 flowers per raceme. Thus, there is a potential for more self pollination early, when standing crop is high.
Note two things of interest about the early season distribution. Each bar is about half the height of the previous bar. And, 57% of the bees are moving off the raceme, which is very similar to the 55% of bees that move off a plant when they move between racemes.