Data for: Wild bee communities benefit from temporal complementarity of hedges and flower strips in apple orchards

1. Wild bees importantly pollinate both crop and wild plants. Yet, in intensive agricultural landscapes, wild bees are rare due to resource limitations of nectar and pollen. Flower strips and hedges are often used as resource enhancements for wild bees to overcome this shortage, but provide floral resources only during specific time periods. To sustain diverse and stable bee communities, bee-attractive flowers need to be available during the entire growing season. This may be achieved by combining flower strips and hedges to complement each other and provide continuous floral resources.
2. Over three subsequent years, we compared the phenology of flower and wild bee communities in perennial flower strips, hedges and improved hedges (complemented with a sown herb layer) in conventional apple orchards in Southern Germany, a pollination-dependent crop-system.
3. Hedges provided floral resources in the early season while the flower strips took over later in the season.
4. Bees visited th...