Larry Caldwell wrote:
In article 7985300e-eff5-42f2-9e21-
,
) 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
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whole entire Universe is just one big atom
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