Landscape fragmentation and habitat loss at multiple scales directly affect species abundance, diversity, and productivity. There is a paucity of information about the effect of the landscape structure and diversity on honey bee colony strength in Africa. Here, we present new insights into the relationship between landscape metrics such as patch size, shape, connectivity, composition, and configuration and honey bee (Apis mellifera) colony strength characteristics. Remote-sensing-based landscape variables were linked to honey bee colony strength variables in a typical highly fragmented smallholder agroecological region in Kenya. We examined colonies in six sites with varying degrees of land degradation during the period from 2017 to 2018. Landscape structure was first mapped using medium resolution bitemporal Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellite imagery with an optimized random forest model. The influence of the surrounding landscape matrix was then constrained to two buffer distances, i.e., 1 km representing the local foraging scale and 2.5 km representing the wider foraging scale around each investigated apiary and for each of the six sites. The results of zero-inflated negative binomial regression with mixed effects showed that lower complexity of patch geometries represented by fractal dimension and reduced proportions of croplands were most influential at local foraging scales (1 km) from the apiary. In addition, higher proportions of woody vegetation and hedges resulted in higher colony strength at longer distances from the apiary (2.5 km). Honey bees in moderately degraded landscapes demonstrated the most consistently strong colonies throughout the study period. Efforts towards improving beekeeper livelihoods, through higher hive productivity, should target moderately degraded and heterogeneous landscapes, which provide forage from diverse land covers.

中文翻译：

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肯尼亚农业生态景观中不同空间尺度的碎片化景观影响蜜蜂群落强度

多尺度景观破碎化和栖息地丧失直接影响物种丰度、多样性和生产力。关于景观结构和多样性对非洲蜜蜂群落强度的影响的信息很少。在这里，我们对斑块大小、形状、连通性、组成和配置等景观指标与蜜蜂（ Apis mellifera）之间的关系提出了新的见解。) 菌落强度特征。在肯尼亚一个典型的高度分散的小农生态农业区，基于遥感的景观变量与蜜蜂群落强度变量相关联。我们检查了 2017 年至 2018 年期间土地退化程度不同的六个地点的殖民地。首先使用具有优化随机森林模型的中等分辨率双时相 Sentinel-1 和 Sentinel-2 卫星图像绘制景观结构图。然后将周围景观矩阵的影响限制在两个缓冲距离内，即 1 公里代表当地觅食规模，2.5 公里代表每个调查的养蜂场和六个地点中的每一个的更广泛的觅食规模。具有混合效应的零膨胀负二项式回归的结果表明，以分形维数表示的斑块几何形状的复杂性较低和农田比例的减少在距养蜂场的局部觅食尺度（1 km）内影响最大。此外，较高比例的木本植被和树篱导致距养蜂场较远距离（2.5 公里）较高的群落强度。在整个研究期间，中等退化景观中的蜜蜂表现出最稳定的强大蜂群。通过提高蜂巢生产力来改善养蜂人生计的努力应针对适度退化和异质的景观，这些景观提供来自不同土地覆盖的草料。