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Science Forum Index » Agriculture Forum » Is the bee overrated as far as pollinator? What about...
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 Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 9:12 pm |
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I miss seeing bees and bumblebees in my apricot orchard this time of
year. Approx 2003
to 2006 my trees of apricots, plums would be full of bee and bumblebee
activity.
The only activity this year is loads and loads of Hoverflies. Can
hoverflies replace the bee
as pollinator?
If they can, it makes little sense that in China they were pollinating
by human hand. Surely
the hoverfly must exist in China. Or is pear not a hoverfly attractor?
Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies |
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| Sean Houtman... |
| Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 2:46 am |
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plutonium.archimedes at (no spam) gmail.com wrote in news:7985300e-eff5-42f2-9e21-
b2b5abe21d5a at (no spam) a23g2000hsc.googlegroups.com:
Quote: I miss seeing bees and bumblebees in my apricot orchard this time of
year. Approx 2003
to 2006 my trees of apricots, plums would be full of bee and bumblebee
activity.
The only activity this year is loads and loads of Hoverflies. Can
hoverflies replace the bee
as pollinator?
If they can, it makes little sense that in China they were pollinating
by human hand. Surely
the hoverfly must exist in China. Or is pear not a hoverfly attractor?
If you have enough aphids to feed the larvae, you can get enough hoverflies
to pollinate your flowers. I wouldn't try to count on them though.
Sean
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com ** |
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| Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 7:16 am |
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Sean Houtman wrote:
Quote:
If you have enough aphids to feed the larvae, you can get enough hoverflies
to pollinate your flowers. I wouldn't try to count on them though.
Sean
I have loads of Asian ladybug beetles so that indicates I have loads
of aphids.
As to how good hoverflies do the job of pollinating compared to
honeybees
is questionable.
I noticed no insects on my Juneberries which is a troubling sign. And
of
all my plums in bloom only one tree had sweat bees on them yesterday.
Why one? Perhaps its smell. I am worried that these fruit trees will
not
be pollinated since I have not seen one single honeybee or bumblebee.
Maybe it is still a bit to chilly for them and will come out in time
for
apples and cherries?
But I have to question the honeybee since it was never native to North
America
and that North America had pollinators of fruit trees before the
honeybee was
introduced into North America. So what was the pollinater before the
honeybee?
Was it the hoverflies and sweatbees?
And if worse comes to worse where the honeybee and bumblebee no longer
exist
in North America, what will take their place as pollinators? Can the
hoverflies and
sweatbees take their place?
Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies |
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| Larry Caldwell... |
| Posted: Sat May 10, 2008 8:26 pm |
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In article <7985300e-eff5-42f2-9e21-
b2b5abe21d5a at (no spam) a23g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
plutonium.archimedes at (no spam) gmail.com (plutonium.archimedes at (no spam) gmail.com) says...
Quote: I miss seeing bees and bumblebees in my apricot orchard this time of
year. Approx 2003
to 2006 my trees of apricots, plums would be full of bee and bumblebee
activity.
The only places the European honey bee is essential is in large
monoculture open pollinated crops, like clover. In orchards, all you
have to do is provide native bees habitat and not kill them off with
pesticides, and they will serve as pollinators just fine. You won't get
the honey crop, but the fruit will do fine.
I have no idea why your bumble bees are absent. In my area, we have had
a cold spring, and the bumble bees have not had enough warm weather to
really start working. There are at least two strains of European honey
bee that are working from wild hives, and the miner bees are out.
--
For email, replace firstnamelastinitial
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| Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 10:44 am |
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Larry Caldwell wrote:
Quote: In article <7985300e-eff5-42f2-9e21-
b2b5abe21d5a at (no spam) a23g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
plutonium.archimedes at (no spam) gmail.com (plutonium.archimedes at (no spam) gmail.com) says...
I miss seeing bees and bumblebees in my apricot orchard this time of
year. Approx 2003
to 2006 my trees of apricots, plums would be full of bee and bumblebee
activity.
The only places the European honey bee is essential is in large
monoculture open pollinated crops, like clover. In orchards, all you
have to do is provide native bees habitat and not kill them off with
pesticides, and they will serve as pollinators just fine. You won't get
the honey crop, but the fruit will do fine.
I have no idea why your bumble bees are absent. In my area, we have had
a cold spring, and the bumble bees have not had enough warm weather to
really start working. There are at least two strains of European honey
bee that are working from wild hives, and the miner bees are out.
Interesting to look up miner bees. I do not know if we have them in
our region
so will keep a eye out for them.
Overall my plum blooms, apricots are finished blooming, juneberry and
currant blooms
are mostly empty. One or two isolated plum trees have hoverflies and
sweat bees.
There is a small sparrow sized bird that is yellow that seems to feed
on the nectar.
Whether this bird help pollinate is questionable.
I have about 30 pots of strawberries for I can control the weeds by
having them in pots
and about 5 have blooms and 3 have berries coming but no bees or
insects are present.
Perhaps beetles pollinate the strawberries. I can monitor the
strawberries easily since I
daily have some maintenance on them.
I am most worried about two cherry trees whether they are going to be
pollinated adequately
this year.
I believe it is the nicotine-based pesticide that is killing the honey
bee populations, so I wonder
how that nicotine pesticide affects sweat-bees and hoverflies. Whether
it kills or makes
them disease-ridden more than honeybees.
Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies |
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