I miss seeing bees and bumblebees in my apricot orchard this time of
year. Approx 2003
to 2006 my trees of apricots, plums would be full of bee and bumblebee
activity.

The only activity this year is loads and loads of Hoverflies. Can
hoverflies replace the bee
as pollinator?

If they can, it makes little sense that in China they were pollinating
by human hand. Surely
the hoverfly must exist in China. Or is pear not a hoverfly attractor?

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

plutonium.archimedes@gmail.com wrote in news:7985300e-eff5-42f2-9e21-
b2b5abe21d5a@a23g2000hsc.googlegroups.com:

If you have enough aphids to feed the larvae, you can get enough hoverflies
to pollinate your flowers. I wouldn't try to count on them though.

Sean

** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

Sean Houtman wrote:

I have loads of Asian ladybug beetles so that indicates I have loads
of aphids.
As to how good hoverflies do the job of pollinating compared to
honeybees
is questionable.

In article <7985300e-eff5-42f2-9e21-
b2b5abe21d5a@a23g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
plutonium.archimedes@gmail.com (plutonium.archimedes@gmail.com) says...

The only places the European honey bee is essential is in large
monoculture open pollinated crops, like clover. In orchards, all you
have to do is provide native bees habitat and not kill them off with
pesticides, and they will serve as pollinators just fine. You won't get
the honey crop, but the fruit will do fine.

I have no idea why your bumble bees are absent. In my area, we have had
a cold spring, and the bumble bees have not had enough warm weather to
really start working. There are at least two strains of European honey
bee that are working from wild hives, and the miner bees are out.

Larry Caldwell wrote:

Today I heard a pretty sound of hundreds of honeybees abuzz in my
apple tree blooms. They
seem to prefer red flowers of crabapple over white flowers. And they
seem to prefer apple blossoms
and not plum or cherry or currants or juneberry. The apricots are out
of bloom but they have a
load of fruit coming. Last year the Llama ate the fruit that was low
branched and will have to
move the Llama soon.

So I think the deal with honeybees is that they are not active until
the temperature reaches
a summer day temperature of 26 Celcius. So when the temperature of a
region reaches 26
C for the daytime and I suppose a warm nighttime also that the
honeybees are active
in pollination.

As I was mowing around my clover field I noticed a bumblebee. This is
the 21st of May and the
bumblebee was probably feeding on dandelions.

Also say a hummingbird feeding on currant blooms.

I am a bit worried about the cherries this year as there were few
pollinators in sight and now the
blooms are gone. So whether the cherry harvest is going to be good or
bad? I have always taken
pollinators for granted.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

Archimedes Plutonium wrote:

Alot has changed since I wrote the above. The strawberries are doing
exceptionally
well, perhaps because I fertilized with nitrogen and also with horse
manure. So there
are about as many blooms as there are leaves. I am going to have boat-
loads of
fresh strawberries, provided they get pollinated.