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  • From: "kieran or donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>
  • To: <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] bees and pollination
  • Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 21:30:05 -0600

As usual we've had bees coming to our winter blooming honeysuckle on the few
warm days this month. this will keep up, along with the purple deadnettle,
till it quits in April, when the kale kicks in. (Don't know what kale honey
tastes like!) Looked like we had the usual small dark "German" wild
honeybees, and some lighter belted ones. It seems we get a concentration of
bees to our garden for these very early flowers, but later we see very few
honeybees. Rainy weather, such as we have had the last two summers in TN,
are supposed to favor the mites. Also, I have read that hard rains tend to
knock the pollen off the flowers, so the bees can't get enough protein for
good brood production.
However, we have no trouble with pollination, as the carpenter bees and
bumblebees, not to mention some very strange looking wasps and the solitary
bees, not only pollinate everything, but cross up my heirloom beans as well.
The reference to "cukes and zukes" got my attention though, because there is
a special species of bee, Apis pepo, that just pollinates curcubits. They
are a little larger than a honeybee, with more dramatic stripes leaning
toward black and white, and they sleep in the flowers at night. Bumblebees
also work curcurbits, but if you go out in the evening to pick some squash
blossoms to fry, and a few of them buzz, that's the pepo bees. (I prefer to
shake the blooms as I pick them and tear open the buzzy ones to let the bees
out in the garden, instead of the kitchen.) I thought any of you who have
these would get a kick out of knowing about them.
I asked a SSE member in Indiana how she could maintain 150 varieties of
beans without a lot of crossing, she said she was in serious farm country,
and so much pesticide was used that they had no pollinators left at all.
She had to hand pollinate her squashes and melons. I can't imagine how tree
crops would fare. This is a very sad comentary on modern agriculture.
Donna





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