Why you should pollinate with honey bees?
You carefully tended to your crops. You have taken measures
to defend against disease and pests, to have flourishing crops with a healthy amount of blossoms. You know the healthier you plants, the better the blossoms. Bigger the fruit translates into bigger profits at harvest time. You have been diligent right up to this point.
So why leave the pollination of your crops to chance?
Pollination is your last chance to increase your crop, and your last chance to ensure all your hard work pays off.
Things to consider ...
- More blossoms are pollinated using honey bees.
- Honey bees visit a flower several times.
- The more visits a honey bee makes to a flower, the better the fruit set.
- Self-pollinating crops grow bigger fruit with honey bee pollination.
- Honey bees increase the quality of our fruit.
Almonds, apples, sweet cherries, plums and prunes are examples of crops that require cross pollination between varieties in order to produce a crop. Bee pollination is necessary for the production of cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, and melons.
Twenty-one additional California fruit and nut crops are known to produce larger yields when pollinated by honey bees. These fruit, nut, and vegetable crops were worth $4.4 billion in 2002 - a value approximately 35 times greater than the income generated directly by the beekeeping industry.
Twenty vegetables, including asparagus, carrots, celery,onions, radishes, and turnips produce seeds only when their flowers have been adequately pollinated. Likewise, seed production of forage crops such as alfalfa, various clovers, trefoil and vetch, requires many visits by foraging bees. Including the "indirect" value of honey bee pollination (meat, dairy products, vegetables, hay, etc.), honey bees are responsible for nearly half of California's agricultural production (cash receipts for farm marketing), which is currently valued above $30.0 billion. Thus, honey bee pollination is really worth in excess of 400 times the intrinsic earning power of the bees to beekeepers.