I have a Royal Lee and a Minnie Lee Cherry in my backyard. Both are blooming and I’m not seeing a lot of bees in them. I think I’ve seen one bee in them so far. I have plenty of bees in my citrus, blueberries, and especially my blackberries. There are bees all over my yard. So I thought I would go and try to hand pollinate. I took my trusty painter’s brushes that I use for other pollination tasks and when I run it through the flowers I get little to almost no pollen coming off. I’m wondering if maybe that’s why the bees aren’t going in there because there’s actually no pollen? To those who have raised cherry trees in the past, do you really see a lot of pollen inside the flowers? I’ve looked at older flowers that were rained on and also newer flowers I have not been rained on. I cannot ascertain any visible pollen on the tip of my paintbrush. I do a lot of pollination of passion fruit so maybe I’m just not used to much smaller pollen sizes of the cherry?
Yeah I have a similar problem with my Montmorency cherries. Bees go nuts for my black currant and haskap flowers, but tend to ignore the cherry flowers right beside them. Some fruit tree flowers have a much lower sugar ratio in their pollen. Pear flowers for example have a very low sugar ratio and large pollen grains and pollination is a challenge. I have to assume cherries do as well given that bees seem generally uninterested. I also tried some hand pollination last year with only so-so results. I did order some mason bee cocoons this year however just to see if that makes any difference.
I was told to put a tray of sucrose water in or near the cherry tree. Not sure if that will help but I am going to try today. I wonder if painting a little sucrose water on the inside flower petals will attract bees and get accidentally pollen transfer if they come visit?
I watched a bee today at the cherry tree. It look at a lot of blossoms but only landed in a few before moving on to the citrus literally a few feet away.
my sour cherries had the same issue last spring. hundreds of flowers with very little fruit developing. they were only at year 4 so maybe younger trees blooms arent as sweet as the older ones? how old are your trees? im hoping mine do better this year.
I think they have been in ground maybe 2-3 years? They were a little bit larger when I bought them.
maybe still too young but most of my sours were only around 12in. when i planted them.
Looks like pollen grains require magnification (per google). So don’t get discouraged! Just finger pollinate a test branch, tag it, and see what happens.
I got up on a ladder and hand pollinated a bunch. Let’s see what happens
Nice! Leave a branch where you don’t pollinate at all? See if it gets any fruit.
There definitely some higher branches I couldnt reach. We shall see 
OoO. Starting to see more cherries. Might have an “okay” haul this year. Minnie Royal is still in pretty full bloom but I can see some cherries forming in the flowers already.
Me too! I always hesitate to declare victory as cherries can shrivel up and drop but usually a thick green healthy stem predicts a healthy fruit. And I am seeing a ton of those.
Hi! First post here 
I have Cristobalina in Southern Spain, 65 meters above sea level, so the chill hours are very limited.
The flowering seemed good, but bees seemed to be totally uninterested…
Some ants though.
I don’t live in my farm, so when I went, I left in the middle of full bloom. I hope that bees went to visit it at least a little before the gushing rains we are now having.
Last year quite a lot of butterflies where attracted to the flowers. Not this year though, but there was a general lack of butterflies, so maybe that was it.
Hello and welcome to the forum! I ended up have pollinating a lot this year. I also have a property I don’t live at where I have fruit trees. Going up there tomorrow to plant another cherry and apple
I hope you get a lot of cherries!
I finger pollinated the flowers, so I hope that helped a little. But there was barely any pollen, only some where readily shedding, so… 
I’m about to graft three spanish native varietes from the mediterrinean coast and balearic islands.
Two of them are self fertile, and all three suposedly low chill, and probably close genetically wise to Cristobalina, so I hope they all flower more or less together and help each other out!
In my climate (generally cold wet springs) hummingbirds and solitary ground bees seem to be the best pollinators (especially the humming birds when it’s cold and rainy…have seen them going to cherry blossoms over neighbours hummingbird feeder so must be something attractive
I need to get into mason bees again. It was a lot of fun. My climate is sunny and dry in socal. Can’t blame weather on the bees lack of interest. I think the citrus blooms literally on each side of the cherries were more attractive to them.
scent. Fascinating. Let us know how it works out!