Data on the interactive effects of insect pollination, weed removal and fungicide application on bumble bee foraging behaviour and faba bean yield

Insect pollinators provide important crop pollination services but are declining in response to lack of diverse flower resources and exposure to pesticides. Despite increasing evidence that the benefits of insect pollination for crop production depend on other ecosystem services and crop management practices, investigations have mostly been limited to how pollination benefits are affected by insect pest control and soil fertility levels. We conducted a factorial cage experiment in 2021 in a field outside Uppsala, Sweden to test how pollination by bumble bees, manual weed removal and fungicide application interactively shape faba bean (Vicia faba) yield components, and how weed removal and fungicide application affect bumble bee foraging rate and behaviour (e.g. nectar robbing versus legitimate pollination). For this we used four treatments, cage with and without insect pollination crossed with with and without weeds. In addition, each cage was divided into two subplots, where one subplot of faba bean was sprayed with fungicide (Signum), and the other subplot was sprayed with distilled water as a control. We replicated each treatment seven times, such that the experiment consisted of 28 cages. We sampled pollinator visitation rate and behaviour during faba bean flowering, pathogen occurrence at crop maturity, weed biomass by species during peak biomass and crop yield at crop maturity. Each of these are individual data files, see additional information about data in the documentation file Metadata.txt.