Keeping the bees busy

Except for the Elliott variety, blueberry pollination is virtually over. One foraging source that has just blossomed is the Black Locust. (Robinia pseudo-acacia) Black Locust is known for the fine quality of honey it produces. In the evening, the beautiful fragrance of the blossoms fills the air.

Black locust blossoms

Bluecrop pollination

The tiny unripe berries on the Bluecrop blueberry bush is a result of  poor pollination. It would be easy to blame the weather but the fact is bees prefer any other blossom to Bluecrop blossoms. This is a persistent problem for Bluecrop. What is the solution? Our plan is to saturate the area with Mason bees. Mason bees forage close to their nests so a lot of Mason bee nests close to the Bluecrop is our plan for next year. We will check back a year from now.

late Bluecrop

unripe Bluecrop

Little bee with a big heart

When this little wild bee was found she was right inside a blueberry blossom. Notice the white blueberry pollen on her back leg. Campare this bee with a honeybee alongside a blueberry blossom.

    Click on image to enlarge.  

The wild bee was caught in a jar and put in the fridge for a few moments to slow her down. She slowed down enough to pose for this picture. As soon as the picture was taken the bee began to stir and then flew off to continue her work.

Honeybees AWOL

Pollination is complete for most blueberries. The duke variety has fruit that is well formed. The Dukes pollinate well with most berries maturing to a good size. Click on pictures to enlarge.

               Duke blueberries.

Elliot blueberries are still showing a lot of blossom but the only pollinator on the Elliots are worker bumblebees.

              Worker bumblebee on Elliot flower.

Meanwhile the honeybees, instead of working the blueberries, are visiting  the clover and the blackberry blossoms.

             Italian bee visiting blackberry blossoms.

By now there are lots of bumblebee workers to pollinate the Elliot blueberries. If there are 100 bumblebee queens in April and if each queen can produce 50 workers then around this time in the season there could be 5000 workers to pick up the slack when the honeybees are enticed elsewhere.

Bumblebees

It takes some searching to find Mason bees at work. Honey bees are more numerous and larger so they are easy to see. But you don’t have to look for the Queen bumblebee. She finds you. And then she circles around you with a loud buzzing sound.

There will be no more Mason bees than the number at the beginning of the season. Any increase will show up next year. The honeybee colony can be expected to grow as pollination proceeds so the last berry blossoms will have higher bee intensity. The queen bumblebees that are around when the first blueberry blossums open will soon disappear. In their place will be many more worker bumblebees. These workers are partialy developed females that help the colony develop by supplying food for the larvae. The queen remains in the nest laying eggs and keeping them warm. The workers are smaller than the queen and go about their work without bothering to “buzz” humans. The number of workers approaching the end of the blueberry harvest can be quite amazing. In the field their numbers can rival the number of honeybees. On top of that, bumblebees are the number one pollinator with their ability to deposit many more grains of pollen.