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

wrote in news:7985300e-eff5-42f2-9e21-
:

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 **

Sean Houtman wrote:


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

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.

--
For email, replace firstnamelastinitial
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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
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

Today I heard a pretty sound of hundreds of honeybees abuzz in my
apple tree blooms. They
seem to prefer red flowers of crabapple over white flowers. And they
seem to prefer apple blossoms
and not plum or cherry or currants or juneberry. The apricots are out
of bloom but they have a
load of fruit coming. Last year the Llama ate the fruit that was low
branched and will have to
move the Llama soon.

So I think the deal with honeybees is that they are not active until
the temperature reaches
a summer day temperature of 26 Celcius. So when the temperature of a
region reaches 26
C for the daytime and I suppose a warm nighttime also that the
honeybees are active
in pollination.

Now I am hoping these honeybees are wild and have a hive nearby. I do
have alot of
dragonflies in the late summer and found out that they prey on
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

As I was mowing around my clover field I noticed a bumblebee. This is
the 21st of May and the
bumblebee was probably feeding on dandelions.

Also say a hummingbird feeding on currant blooms.

I am a bit worried about the cherries this year as there were few
pollinators in sight and now the
blooms are gone. So whether the cherry harvest is going to be good or
bad? I have always taken
pollinators for granted.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

Archimedes Plutonium wrote:

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.


Alot has changed since I wrote the above. The strawberries are doing
exceptionally
well, perhaps because I fertilized with nitrogen and also with horse
manure. So there
are about as many blooms as there are leaves. I am going to have boat-
loads of
fresh strawberries, provided they get pollinated.

I need to also get long sheets of steel panels to lay on the ground so
that I am no longer
having to weed between the pots.

There remains only one last concern for me. Last winter I dug holes in
a bed and set the
pots in the holes and covered the tops with straw. The strawberries
did well. But that is alot
of work, so I am looking for a better solution. Something more
compact. I wonder if I can
take the plants come November out of their pots and heel them into one
long bed, so that
I can start over the next year with fresh new topsoil and to break
apart daughter plants.

I need to streamline the winter storage of strawberries. Sort of like
what nurseries do to strawberries
before they sell them barerooted. Because next winter I should have at
least doubled the
number of pots from 30 to 60 or more and that is a big chore to dig
holes.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies