Honey bees are never rented for fresh market production of these crops by themselves, but bees may visit the flowers if they are nearby and nothing else is available. Wild bumble bees have been observed more often in potatoes than honey bees, but potatoes are vegetatively propagated, so they don’t need pollinators for production. Asparagus flowers are very attractive to honey bees, and rental colonies are used for seed crops of asparagus. Some vegetable crops flower and produce fruits, but we do not harvest that part of the plant. Type 3: Stem and root vegetables that do not need pollination from bees, but may still attract bees. The packages that these bumble bees come in are designed with insecticide applications in mind, having a door to shut them inside when a spray is required. Large-acreage growers should not rent honey bees for these crops, but greenhouse tomato and pepper growers will often rely on commercial bumble bees. If nothing else is available for bees during their bloom, then they will visit these pollen and nectar sources. The flowering period for these crops can vary based on their planting time. The legumes, solanaceous crops and okra may benefit marginally from bee visits, but sweet corn does not benefit from bees even though bees will readily visit to collect its huge amounts of pollen. Such crops include tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, okra, beans, peas and sweet corn. Some flowering vegetable crops can set fruit without bees, but bees will still visit them. Type 2: Fruiting vegetables that do not need pollination from bees, but still attract bees. For all growers dealing with these bee-dependent crops, wait until evening when bees are no longer foraging to make sprays. Other multi-crop vegetable growers may rent hives for an entire season for multiple bloom times of many varieties of vine crops.
Cover plants sprayed with insecticides and pesticides windows#
Growers of large-acreage processing vine crops often contract honey bees for specific windows of time to concentrate their fruit set and avoid spraying insecticides within that window. Developing fruit and fresh flowers can often be found on the same plant at the same time. Such crops are cucumbers, gourds, melons, pumpkins and squash. Vine crops tend to be continually flowering and visited by managed honey bees and wild bees throughout the growing season. Vegetables and their relationship to bees Type 1: Fruiting vegetables that need pollination from bees. Products can be chosen based on their toxicity to bees, their potential synergisms and how they are applied. This complex situation can be simplified by first categorizing the vegetables on your farm by how attractive they are to pollinators, then thinking about the products at hand for managing key pests. Renting honey bee hives for an entire season to meet the needs of multiple vegetable plantings is common, but can complicate insecticide applications. This is complicated by sequential planting, season extension tools, cover crops and field rotations, all of which can contribute to long bloom periods and multiple critical periods when pollination is needed. Growers producing a mix of vegetables will likely have crops that fall at different points in the gradient of pollination requirements. In some vegetables, pollination is key to high yields, while in others there is little need for pollination for the marketable part of the crop. The wide diversity of vegetable crops means there is a diversity of pollination requirements.
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