A single flower will only pollinate one to a few other flowers. A brush can go for hundreds or thousands before needing cleaning. I clean the brush when the bristles get all globed together. The brush is way faster. It’s all about numbers and on a decent size tree there can be hundreds receptive at any one time.
The shedding issue is all important no matter what method. The anthers undergo changes from the time the flower opens thru and past pollen shedding. They are big and yellow when shedding and then wither away. When pollinating I’m most concerned about picking up pollen and in that process I’m also pollinating the same flowers that are shedding.
Can you give some tips as to what stage of the flower is best for gathering pollen? I’ve tried hand pollinating but don’t really see much or any pollen on my brushes.
After a while you can recognize the pollen shed stage. The anthers swell up and turn yellow. Since that happens at about the same time the stigma is receptive, you are killing two birds with one stone. Gathering pollen and pollinating all at one flower. I go around looking for flowers shedding pollen since I can’t recognize when stigma is receptive. I do look for the pistol/stigma and stab the brush in that direction. On some flowers the stigma is out front showing off. On others it’s tucked back in amongst the anthers.
That is an amazing photo of a very difficult subject. I don’t even see where you glued it to a flower! When we place bees in orchards ,we always put more bees in an area than needed. All the flowers will get worked that way. Avoids complaints and makes sure beekeeper gets paid! Bees will always work the nectar/pollen source with the most pay back for there work. This conserves their energy and allows them to do what they want to do: make more bees!
I have no trouble at all with pollination in my orchard- at least now that I’ve cut down my last kiwi, which no native pollen forager seems to be the least bit attracted to.
In home orchards, the best tactic may be to nourish a wide range of buzzem buddy species by having a wide range of flowering plants throughout the growing season. I notice that different species are attracted to different blooms at any give time. If you have a wide range of pollen feeding flies and bees they will likely serve every species you grow reliably. At least that’s how it seems to work in the northeast.
One of the most underrated and unappreciated pollinators here are carpenter bees, which flourish on my property because I let them have free access to structural wood in sheds and such on my property.
I can repair any damage they might inflict but their determination to get out their and feed in weather much too cool for honey bees makes them worth any expense.
I know of a house that had to replace it’s entire roof because they had drilled so many holes in the roof trusses in the attic that it was structurally compromised. So much so that snowfall had began to cause the roof to sag. When we were kids we used to like to whack them with wiffle ball bats.
In the natural environment they serve a useful purpose, but given time and the right circumstances they can be super destructive to man made structures.
I categorize them with termites, carpenter ants and poisonous snakes. All great creatures but I don’t want them near my house.
Borage draws many, many bees to my yard. It grows VERY easily–it can be invasive, but it’s easy to pull up if you dot want it. It’s also very beautiful. I’ve noticed California Poppies also call lots of bees here. My blueberry bushes seem to call bumblebees. I haven’t had any trouble with pollination and the yard is always buzzing. It’s a warm and comforting sound when you know what it means for your fruit!
They are only attracted to certain kinds of woods. I have cedar wood shingles on part of my house that they leave alone. There is trim of no structural importance on the concrete block part of my house and they go crazy for that soft wood.
It is easy to protect the wood form them that you need to, I have read, and when they serve fruit plants so well, it is well worth attempting to accommodate them, IMO. They are not like termites- someone would have to be and idiot to let them destroy structural wood without knowing it’s going on years in advance.
yeah…these folks were very old and I doubt even saw the outside of their home much in the last decade. My friend replaced the entire roof for them. He said in some places they had bored thru vinyl fascia to gain entrance even when they didn’t have to.
I have lots of carpenter bees. This spring I wondered if they had created a drone gathering/mating area the way that honeybees do, because there were a good 100 or so of them hanging out in one secluded garden seating area. They tend to live in the decaying logs that we have here and there, but also like my pine deck railings. They used to like the masonite siding that was on the house, but I had that replaced with a concrete based siding for durability and fire resistance. Now, they are out where they belong. Carpenter bees are my most active pollenators on the asian plums. The busiest pollinators on the blueberries are little moths that look like slightly fat honeybees.
The carpenters here love my blueberries. I read an article by some university fruit guru that they should be destroyed if you are growing blueberries commercially because they tend to bore straight through the flowers and destroy them to reach pollen. I’ve never seen that happen here. Strange how creatures, even same species of insects, behave differently in different regions.
How can a moth look like a chubby honeybee? Do you mean a hummingbird? We have that one here.
I have a large colony of carpenter bees, most of the time I see a pollinator thats what it is. On the blueberries they make a small hole in the side of the flower to get at the nectar. But I don’t think it does any more damage than that. Nearly all of my flowers end up with those holes and I get tons of blueberries.
I’m not sure why they are not popular like mason bees. I guess people don’t like them drilling holes in their houses.
My approach is to plant something that blooms year-round or at least blooms from the earliest of your fruit blossoms through the end of the growing season. This way, the bees will be already coming to the garden or orchard and then will also take part in the fruit tree blooms.
Here in zone 10b I have a lot of choices for this, my favorite though is Cleveland Sage.
When living in zone 9a I had rosemary in pots about the yard that (provided you fed them) flowered February through October.
Perhaps some members here from colder climates also employ this tactic?
Anything I can do to attract bees? Short answer…no. Honeybees forage based on three floral points of interest to them.
Is the fresh nectar the highest in sugar concentration? No reason to spend the extra energy in flight and drying to collect a low sugar nectar when a better sugar source is available or the bees lose the energy equation from a low concentrate nectar. Are there sufficient flowers to alert and risk the colony’s foragers? A handful of high sugar flowers won’t draw a lot of attention from a colony due to honeybees’ trait to work one nectar source a day. Having bees set because an attractive nectar source ran out is a sure path to colony starvation. Is the storage space sufficient in the colony’s location to cure and dry the nectar to honey? If the hive is full of nectar or honey, the bees won’t forage, explaining why you always want an empty super on the colony if possible. First bees out in the morning are scouts. They return with nectar samples and a complex dance that directs the foragers to the nectar source. The foragers return and pass the nectar to house bees who process the nectar drawing more foragers. As more competition develops for the high quality nectar, other bees will arrive on scene without enough food to return home and forage on lower quality nectar. In my orchard, foraging hierarchy is dandelion, creeping charlie, apples, and pear. So to overcome the irresistible dandelion, I increase the competition for nectar by introducing more bees giving better fruit set. With more attractive food or pollen sources, your fruit trees just get lower on the pollination list. Because the life expectancy of a worker bee in the summer is 3-4 weeks, colony memory doesn’t count for much. So without planting vast arrays of flowers with overlapping bloom periods, the bees are going to the highest sugar concentration available. If it’s your fruit trees, they will come.
In my small 40 tree orchard, we set 3 colonies of bees on Sunday. On my walk through this morning, there were bees galore on dandelions, thick in the creeping charlie, and a bunch left over for the trees. Mission accomplished.
Chikn, you have made some very important points. If what you say is true about “working one nectar source a day” then it must be that in every home I’ve lived in since a young boy in 1960, there are multiple hives in the area. I draw this conclusion because there have always been bees visiting specific individual plants every day of the year.
So would this be the reason most university guidelines suggest orchards remove dandelion from the orchard floor? Every year I see bees tending dandelions in preference to my tree blossoms. It seems they prefer it over nearly everything else from my observations. I don’t know if the nectar is better or if they are just more accustomed to tending dandelion as learned behavior.
What do they do with creeping Charlie…I don’t know that I’ve seen it’s flower though my yard is unfortunately, inundated with it?
Altho dl produce prolific sugary nectar, they are not a good pollen source(poor nutritional value). Bees supplement with tree and other pollen sources. Creeping charlie has a small purple bloom just before and after fruit bloom with excellent pollen. On rare years you can get dandelion honey described as bitter and pale green. Removing dl from my orchard just means my bees go next door and makes a pest of themselves over there. I don’t know if I’d give bees to many attaboys for learning, great instincts tho. Remember bees see in either infared or ultraviolet can"t remember now, flowers have a completely different look in uv light. Stripes and circles to show the bees where the flower parts are. Amazing when you see it.
Apple, I think univ. just cya on most opinions. Instead of 4-6 colonies/acre and leave the dl; spray the dl and use 1-2 colonies/acre and pay to drive tractor and sprayer through the orchard. Every one gets a little pay then. No one’s mad at univ. Late at night and I get cynical and mean spirited. Just like ccd, tell bkpers to clean up their acts, tell the true about neonics and quit trying to save dirty, sick hives that need to develop resistance to mites not to stronger miticides. Now you did it… I’m on my soap box and I’m delirious. Thanks, I needed that We are weird peoples!!
Chikn
When we place bees in orchards ,we always put more bees in an area than needed. All the flowers will get worked that way. Avoids complaints and makes sure beekeeper gets paid! Bees will always work the nectar/pollen source with the most pay back for there work. This conserves their energy and allows them to do what they want to do: make more bees!
We are weird peoples!!