The year my apple trees had no bees.

9 years ago

It's a real disappointing start to the season for me. Over the past 3 weeks my apple trees were in full bloom. My KARMIJN DE SONNAVILLE tree is the last to have any flowers. Out of my 22 apple trees I had well over 2500+ flowers. (most trees are 5 years old). I also have a very old and extremely large crab apple tree on the property, it is about 25 feet tall by 30 feet wide. It was beautifully covered in thousands upon thousands of flowers for about 2 weeks during the same time period as the other trees. Not at any time during blossom, did i see a single mason bee, honey bee or bumble bee. Alarmed at this, i tried to self pollinate some of the apple trees with a q-tip. I was just out checking all of my fruit trees on the property. I have maybe 30 apples that actually are growing after successful fertilization.

It's the same story for my plums and apricot trees. Thousands of flowers, and minimal fruiting. It's a real wake up call to set up my own hives. I am guessing its too late to do this year.

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Comments (6)

fabaceae_native
9 years ago
It's certainly not too late to start a hive, but it is too late to buy the bees, which typically requires being on a waiting list since January. That's expensive anyway, so you could hope to get lucky and find someone selling or splitting a colony, or capture a swarm.

BUT, as worrisome as no bees is, I would still question whether that was your problem here... remember that bees, and especially honeybees, are NOT the only pollinators of fruit trees. The best fruit set I have seen in 10 years in my area coincided with a miller moth population explosion -- the moths were swarming all day and night over every blossom they could find, and I have no doubt that they took care of the pollination that year!

A note about Apricot pollination: honeybees are rarely active when these flower, and the weather is usually marginal for them to get much pollination done, but Apricots typically over crop anyway. I don't actually know what does most of the pollination, but I doubt it is principally bees, at least in my area. The real threat to all the common fruits here is late spring frosts.
ltilton
9 years ago
I ordered a new batch of mason bees this spring, but I've seen very little activity from them. Either they died or went Elsewhere.

My apples only had a few dozen clusters, and although there were plenty of flowers on the crabs and one tree of my neighbor's, there were apparently not enough to attract any bees. I went out today and found most of the clusters had aready dropped all their potential fruitlets, unpollinated.

The pears, flowering abundantly, were pollinated by something, if not bees. I've read that pear flowers aren't very attractive to bees.
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ediej1209 AL Zn 7
9 years ago
I heard on the news a couple of weeks ago that most of Ohio's bees are gone due to Bee Colony Colapse disease. We had lots of blooms on our apple trees but ... I think it's going to be a bad year for fruits and veggies this year :^(
ericwi
9 years ago
Here in Madison, Wisconsin, we are having an OK year for bee pollination, on the blueberry flowers. We have two different kinds of digger bees, that live in the ground. I think they are genus Andrena. We also have bumblebees, and someone in the neighborhood has honeybees, because I am seeing them as well. I go to considerable length to keep the bees happy-there is no insecticide used here, and no herbicides, either. We have a some native flowers, and these were chosen so there would be something flowering throughout the growing season. Last year we had week after week of cold and overcast weather and the bees were scarce. Pollination was not complete, and we harvested about 1/3 of what was expected. So far, this year looks better.
ltilton
9 years ago
This year, here, the weather was constantly cold and overcast, and the bees, what bees there were, rarely came out.
beeman_gardener
9 years ago
As a bee keeper I share your pain, believe me.
I am fortunate I don't live in a area where they use any Nionicatinoids (sp) so I do manage to keep my hives going.
I do notice this year, in spite of the terrible winter, a resurgence of local pollinators, especially Bumble bees, so my blue berries have had a real going over.

The year my apple trees had no bees.

Comments (6)

fabaceae_native

ltilton

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