North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

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For what it's worth, I live in an area with zero honey bees. I have lived here for 30 years now and only once, about 5 years ago, do I believe I spotted a single honey bee on a white clover in my yard. He flew away before I could get a really good look and I'm not sure even that one was really a honey bee. (I have seen honey bees in good numbers in neighboring towns as close as 20 miles away.)
Anyway, I have 4 apple trees and several other fruit trees. The apples especially have a high fruit set and thinning is required in any year with a normal number of flowers. My trees get pollinated by small native bees and, sometimes, a few bumble bees.

Steve (In the Adirondacks)

-----Original Message-----
From: rob hamilton <lostman_amiga@yahoo.com>
To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sun, 11 Nov 2007 6:00 pm
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Introduction of apples to North America

This site states:
" When the English colonists arrived in North America they found only crab apples. Crab apple trees are the only native apples to the United States. European settlers arrived and brought with them their English customs and favorite fruits. In colonial time, apples were called winter banana or melt-in-the-mouth.

1622 - Most historians fail to mention that those early orchards produced very few apples because there were no honey bees.  Historical information indicates that colonies of honey bees were shipped from England and landed in the Colony of Virginia early in 1622. One or more shipments were made to Massachusetts between 1630 and 1633, others probably between 1633 and 1638. The Indians called the honeybees "English flies" and/or “white man’s flies.”


So does this mean that crab apples were not very productive either or are they more open to other types of pollinators?
Also I thought our native bees are very active during the apple flowering season and are now used for some apple production.
Though I can understand how honey bees would increase production,
I would assume the native bees would still plenty of habitat to thrive and serve well.

I was also under the impression that Native Americans had there own types of fruit orchards before the Europeans arrived (whether there were crabapples or some other type of fruit...I dont know.
 
 Am I wrong in all these assumptions?



robert

 

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