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Typically growers double or triple the same old variety of honey bee colonies in a area or orchard as a way to get ample pollination. For the bees themselves, it means extra competitors for scarce assets.
Inside: Pollination saturation is a little-known approach for rising the pollination charge of sure crops. It really works properly, however some individuals imagine it’s unfair to the bees.
Flooding a crop with bees
Pollination saturation (typically known as saturation pollination) is the follow of flooding a crop with an overly-large variety of honey bee colonies as a way to guarantee sufficient pollination.
Growers use pollination saturation when the crop to be pollinated, resembling alfalfa or cranberries, is just not 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 popular nectar disappears.
For instance, blueberries are usually not a well-liked plant, though honey bees will forage on them if nothing else is out there. 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 further colonies of honey bees.
Including further colonies, double or triple the traditional quantity, brings an outrageous variety of bees to a small space. So many, in actual fact, that the popular nectar quickly disappears. When that occurs, bees haven’t any alternative 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 in charge honey bees for competitors, so much depends upon the growers and the beekeepers. The bees themselves can’t be blamed for a state of affairs people put them in.
The follow started in California alfalfa however is now frequent
Pollination saturation first grew to become a factor again in 1948, and it really works for particular crops resembling 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 probably 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 software that may be each helpful and detrimental. It’s a kind of issues that beekeepers ought to learn 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
I backed my love of bee science with a bachelor’s diploma in Agronomic Crops and a grasp’s in Environmental Research. I write extensively about bees, together with a present column in American Bee Journal and previous columns in Two Million Blossoms and Bee Craft. I’ve endured a number of programs in melittology and made in depth identifications of North American bees for iNaturalist and different organizations. My grasp beekeeper certificates issued from U Montana. I’m additionally an English nerd. Extra right here.
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