Bumble bee slaves?

I was just wondering if anyone has tried this or knows if its possible? I've heard that the best way to pollinate flowers is for the bees to do it for you. Even if its possible to pollinate them your self it has been said that you will get much better formed fruits and vegies from the bees doing it. So my thought was that you could catch a bee in a glass or something similar and put it on male flowers then female flowers to pollinate them (I'm actually referring to pumpkin flowers here). I just don't know if the bee would get spooked and go crazy trying to get away or if it would carry on gathering nectar from whichever flower you put it on.

 

A non-starter I think Allan. How are you going to stop it from flying off when it's on the flowers, there will be gaps. Also, it's a long winded way of doing things and yes, the bee will probably go crazy and concentrate on escaping, not the flowers.......and I don't blame it!

 

Get a small paint brush Allan

 

I just use the cut the head off method

 

Commercial growers do exactly that. You can buy colonies of bumblebees to release into your greenhouse/polytunnel.

I've been boycotting one particular seed supplier for a few years now after they started selling them, along with advice that for best results keep them trapped so they can ONLY work the flowers in your greenhouse, and replace the colony in 6 weeks after they've starved to death.

 

Allan, I think you should try using Wasps. They'll probably enjoy it and won't try to sting you or anything!

Clueless, that's awful. Didn't know they did that. Do you think all growers do that?

 

I know it is not unusual for commercial growers to keep bumblebees, but I don't know if they follow this certain company's advice to keep a colony too large to ensure pollination, but at the expense that there wont be enough flowers to sustain them indefinitely. The idea is if there are too many bees for the amount of flowers being produced, then the bees have no option to make sure they don't miss any flowers, and that they visit the same flower more frequently than they normally would, just to try to scrape a living. It makes sense I guess from a commercial fruit production point of view, but it just seems a bit mean to me.

We're not talking about trapping a few bees in a greenhouse for a few days here, which would I guess do no harm to anything, but trapping hundreds of bees in an enclosure too small for them until they drop dead.

 

How hard would it be to open the doors and windows after a certain period of time to let them out?

[Insert rude words here]

 

i was just thinking the same thing frost. after the flowers are pollinated why not put the hives outside

 

Which seed company is it?

 

Yes come on name a shame then we can all avoid using them please

 

I'm not going to name names for several reasons, the main ones being:
* For the most part, it is a good company.
* What they sell and the advice they offer is not secret, its in their catalogue. We can all make our own decisions based on information readily provided.

I haven't looked at their catalogue for a couple of years now. It may well be that they've removed bumblebees as a product, or changed their advice on what to do with them since I last looked.

 

I would really like to know Clueless as could never support a company who did that, we (as in all of us!) should be doing everything we can to nurture our flying friends.

That has upset me

To Allan - a little make up brush worked fine for me with the first squash, it's growing well. However it would appear I was impatient as I now have 3 more all sorted by my lovely buzzy friends.

 

yeah ive been able to pollinate. its mostly a problem when it comes to hand pollinating things like strawberries

 

Hi All
@Allan Hodgson @clueless1
I know that the big companies in the UK use Bumble bees in the greenhouses for pollination, but because they are produced outside of the UK and brought in they are all destroyed at the end of the season , you may find this link useful and will explain better than I would.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080722225336.htm