Pawpaw Pollination: Trick Bees to Do It

Here’s a newspaper snip a friend emailed:
Pawpaw Pollination Newspaper Snip

Dax

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A much more appealing method than hanging a dead fish, I say. Thanks for posting. Will try this next spring.

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Bonus: guaranteed to confuse and amuse your neighbors!

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I’ll go with amuse. The neighbors think I’m cool to have planted all this stuff or one guy’s ex-wife said he was jealous.

Dax

Interesting method, will try next year too. I have no idea of the behavior/trainability of a honey bee. I guess one would have to do this trick every year, right? Maybe someone with more knowledge than me about honey bees can do an educated guess.

Thanks for posting

Every year.

Another guy I know hangs fly paper.

Dax

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Honeybees do learn very well. I let one fig tree go unpicked a little too long and they became very attracted to it, when I picked it down they left. But as soon as there was a single soft ripe fig on that tree there would be 10 bees on it, but just that one tree and the ones on either side of it. One bee must do the remembering and scout the location daily, then tell the others when a fig is ripe. They can’t break the skin of the fig but if it cracks or yellowjackets get one started they will take it over. It took about a month of keeping that tree well picked until they stopped coming.

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Wonder if anyone here got the “drop on honey” trick to work.

It’s not a good idea to feed comercial honey to bees.
There is a risk of spreading bee disease , foul brood ,etc.
Sugar water ( syrup )may be a safer alternative .

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