Visitation rate of four bee groups within the Calanques National park, Marseille, France

This dataset presents the number of visits and visitation rates realized by four wild bee groups (small bees - < 10-12 mm, large bees  > 12 mm, bumblebees and honey bees) on Mediterranean plant species. Data were collected during field surveys taking place from March to June in 2017 and 2018 in the Calanques National Park, Marseille, France on 17 sites.

In each site (i.e. 100 m² plots), to maximize the record of bee visitation rates, we first determined the most flowered patches through a visual observation and then we chose the 3 one-square meters most flowered patches to observe plant-bee interactions. An observation consisted in the recording of the visitation rate of each bee group on each plant species in one meter square for 5 minutes per patch in 2017 and 10 minutes per patch in 2018. A session consisted of the sum of observations of all plant-bee interactions on the three one-square-meter patches (i.e. 15 min per plot in 2017 and 30 min per plot in 2018). Nine sessions were performed in 2017 per plot and 5 sessions in 2018 per plot for a total of 135 minutes of observations per plot in 2017 and 150 minutes of observations per plot in 2018. Observations were made between 8h00 and 18h00 and when weather conditions were favorable (no windy or rainy days). 

Data contains the plant species, the plant family, the site's name, coordinates in WGS84, the date, the week calendar number, the year, the number of visits realized by small bees, large bees, honeybees, bumblebees, period of observation, then visitation rates of each bee group, visited plant richness on each plot each week and cover of each plant species in each site. Each line corresponds to a plant species observed during one observation. Each visit was counted when a bee plunged its head into the flower.