Bee diversity and abundance during peach bloom in South Carolina, United States

Peach (Prunus persica [L.] Batsch) is an important specialty fruit crop in the United States. Peach is self-compatible, but bee pollination enhances fruit sets and diverse populations improve pollination efficiency. However, the bee diversity and abundance in peach orchards in South Carolina are unknown. To understand this, we sampled bees during peach tree bloom at two locations in South Carolina- the Clemson University Musser Fruit Research Center (MFRC) and a peach farm in Ridge Spring, South Carolina. Overall, a total of 651 bees were collected from peach orchards, of which Bombus (37%) and Apis (32%) were the most dominant genera, followed by Eucera (14%), Andrena (8%) and Habropoda (5%). Diversity indices indicate higher species richness and diversity at the Ridge Spring farm than at MFRC. Dominant species at the MFRC were Apis mellifera (36.77%), Bombus bimaculatus (29.1%), B. griseocolis (12%) and Eucera hamata (8%). In contrast, the Ridge Spring farm was dominated by A. mellife..., The data supporting this manuscript was recorded by collecting bees from peach orchards in South Carolina over two years in 2021 and 2022. We used a combination of blue vane traps and aerial sweep netting to collect bees., , # Bee diversity and abundance during peach bloom in South Carolina, United States [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.stqjq2c9m](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.stqjq2c9m) Our current data comprised bee abundance and diversity collected from different peach orchards in South Carolina in 2021 and 2022. ## Description of the data and file structure Most of the data is descriptive with a count of bee species prevalent at peach orchards. SWN: Sweep Netting, BVT: Blue Vane Trap ## Sharing/Access information NA ## Code/Software NA