Hand pollinating fruit trees with makeup brushes?

General Fruit Growing
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Majority of our fruit flowers before pollinating insects are out en masse. Been getting tons of flowers but not saleable quantities of fruit.
Watched some youtube vids, one, gentleman just broke off a branch and rubbed partners flowers with it, a comment mentioned using a makeup brush.

Any tips are much appreciated.

Fruit flowering are apricots, plums, pears, cherries, blueberries, saskatoons, haskaps and chums.

thank you for your reply.

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Makeup brushes work well for me when the plant needs assistance.

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I’ve done this quite a bit. It is easier in my opinion than using another flower because it can’t break apart. For what it’s worth, I like e.l.f. brushes because they are inexpensive, but decent quality so they hold up to washing. They can be found at a lot of drugstores, target, walmart for $5 and less.

That being said, I’ve also read a bit of dog hair works pretty well, too.

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Hand pollination works but it’s very tedious and only suitable for a few small trees. I’ve done it in my greenhouse. Buying a hive of bumblebees is much easier. A class C hive lasts about 5 weeks. My only issue with bumblebees is they can overwork the flowers. But that really hasn’t reduced fruit set that I can tell.

A class C hive comes with ~40 adult bees. I have resorted to killing some off to reduce overworking of flower buds. Cost is ~$150. Well worth it as they’ll do a better job than many hours of hand pollination.

It may not be suitable for outside.

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I did come across this: https://backyardpollinator.com/product/cedar-all-in-one/

Need to do more research but figure on buying one, thinking hand pollination as well just to pad our hand.

We can start producing saleable quantities of fruit it’ll be a huge boon to daughters market garden venture.

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I tried mason bees but never got anything to hatch. Those are cool season bees. I’ve thought about leaf cutter bees which are warm weather bees. They might work in my GH because I let it warm into the 80s or low 90s during bloom.

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Grow clovers instead of maintaining a pristine yard. and set aside habitats and dont spray insecticides. Nature to me is better than Nurture. It takes a little time but the rewards are many many fold.

Pollinator decline has been happening in industrial countries… there is still time for us to get a grasp on it i think.

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Here’s the method that @SkillCult uses, I’ve done this with pretty good results: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnh5-zXleIQ

He uses microfiber makeup applicators.

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Thanks again for all the replies everyone. Going to do some research on Mason bees, maybe try that next spring and find some cheap makeup brushes. That was an interesting vid.
We are on a farm, have 2 little alfalfa patches about 50 yds W of our little orchard; (when moved here both sides of driveway were worked area’s about 20 by 40 yds, previous owner said he grew potatoes there; rather than work it or have a weed patch I just seeded them to alfalfa.)
The Mason bees may be the ticket. If not, well, daughters not scared of work and I just love helping her and growing fruit. :slight_smile:

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