Records of flower visitors in Japanese crops

A series of monitoring of insects visiting crop flowers was conducted on several crop species around Japan. The project, which ran from 2017 to 2021, was led by NARO and funded by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) to determine the abundance and diversity of wild insects that could potentially contribute to crop production across Japan. Flower-visiting wild insects were captured using plastic vials during the blooming season at multiple sites for one to several years. Domesticated pollinators, Apis mellifera and Osmia cornifrons were also captured in 2017. This data includes more than 6,500 individuals of flying insects from 18 families of Hymenoptera, 33 families of Diptera, 17 families of Coleoptera, Hemiptera, Lepidoptera, Psocodea, and Neuroptera captured in 20 fields of apple (Malus pumila Mill.), Japanese pear (Pyrus pyrifolia (Burm.f.) Nakai), and Oriental persimmon (Diospyros kaki Thunb.) as of August 2023.