TITLE:
Plants Foraged by Apis mellifera adansonii Latreille in Southern Chad
AUTHORS:
Delphine Dongock Nguemo, Pierre Marie Mapongmetsem, Mahamat Abdoulaye
KEYWORDS:
Melliferous Plants, Apis mellifera, Biological Type, Southern Chad
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.3 No.8,
August
15,
2016
ABSTRACT:
Melliferous plants of Chad are less known despite their diversity. The main
objective of this study was to better assess the diversity of these plants. This
work was carried out in the rainy of 2014 in the region of Guera. Direct observations
of bees foraging during seasonal field trips were carried competed by interview
of a total of 300 volunteers’ beekeepers using a semi-structured questionnaire. A total of 52 melliferous plants distributed
into 16 botanical families were identified. The most represented family in term of number of species was Mimosaceae (37.25%) and the least was Tiliaceae (01.96%).
The biological distribution of the beeplants species revealed that trees (54.90%) were the abundant
type. The flower colour of melliferous plants was variable, with the white color (23.52%) being dominant. The spontaneous
species (81.00%) were highly more frequent compared to the cultivated beeplants.
Polliniferous plants (60.0%) were more represented as compared to nectariferous
plants (40%).