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Typically growers double or triple the same old variety of honey bee colonies in a area or orchard with a view to get ample pollination. For the bees themselves, it means extra competitors for scarce sources.
Inside: Pollination saturation is a little-known method for rising the pollination charge of sure crops. It really works effectively, however some individuals imagine it’s unfair to the bees.
Flooding a crop with bees
Pollination saturation (typically referred to as saturation pollination) is the apply of flooding a crop with an overly-large variety of honey bee colonies with a view to guarantee sufficient pollination.
Growers use pollination saturation when the crop to be pollinated, comparable to alfalfa or cranberries, shouldn’t be a honey bee favourite. Or they might use it when luscious close by weeds are blooming concurrently with the crop. If honey bees crave the close by weeds greater than the crop, they’re gone till their most well-liked nectar disappears.
For instance, blueberries are usually not a well-liked plant, though honey bees will forage on them if nothing else is on the market. But when the farmer subsequent door is rising cabbage seed, the honey bees will abandon the blueberries in favor of the candy nectar of cabbage. In that case, to guarantee sufficient blueberry pollination, the blueberry farmer should herald additional colonies of honey bees.
Including additional colonies, double or triple the conventional quantity, brings an outrageous variety of bees to a small space. So many, actually, that the popular nectar quickly disappears. When that occurs, bees don’t have any selection however to work the crop they don’t like…or waste time and vitality flying additional afield.
With so many bees in a single spot, they vie for any nectar and pollen they will discover. Honey bees fiercely compete with one another and with native bees, butterflies, and others. Introducing so many colonies places meals stress on all of the native pollinators.
Whereas many individuals are fast guilty honey bees for competitors, quite a bit is dependent upon the growers and the beekeepers. The bees themselves can’t be blamed for a scenario people put them in.
The apply started in California alfalfa however is now widespread
Pollination saturation first turned a factor again in 1948, and it really works for particular crops comparable to cranberries, blueberries, alfalfa, ladino clover, alsike clover, kiwifruit, and a few melons and squashes.1 Historically, most crops require 2-3 hives per acre for good pollination, though the precise quantity varies from 1 to 7, relying on the crop. However lately, that quantity has risen due to the lack of wild bees and the decimation of feral honey bee colonies.
Losses of untamed bees are doubtless due to pesticides, monoculture crops, habitat destruction, and local weather change. Feral honey bees have all these points together with varroa mites, viruses, and different pests and pathogens.
Pollination saturation is solely one other device that may be each helpful and detrimental. It’s a kind of issues that beekeepers ought to find out about, even when they by no means use it themselves.
Rusty
Honey Bee Suite
- Saturation pollination. (2018, July 18). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturation_pollination
About Me
My love of bee science is backed by a bachelor’s diploma in Agronomic Crops and a grasp’s in Environmental Research. I’ve written extensively about bees, together with a present column in American Bee Journal and previous columns in Two Million Blossoms and Bee Craft. In recent times, I’ve taken a number of programs in melittology and made intensive identifications of North American bees for iNaturalist. My grasp beekeeping certificates issued from U Montana. Extra right here.
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