Honeybees have been dying in record numbers, yet many commercial crops depend on them for pollination. Entomologists who have been struggling to find an alternative now report that another bee might fill the void.
The blue orchard bee, also known as the orchard mason bee, is undergoing intensive study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture pollinating insect research unit at Utah State University at Logan. James Cane, an entomologist there, says a million blue orchards are now pollinating crops in California. Like honeybees, the species can pollinate a variety of flora, including almond, peach, plum, cherry and apple trees. Unlike honeybees, however, they tend to live alone, typically in boreholes made by beetles in dead trees. In cultivation, the bees will happily occupy holes drilled into lumber or even Styrofoam blocks.
The blue orchards rarely sting and, because of their solitary nature, do not swarm. They are incredibly efficient pollinators: for fruit trees, 2,000 blue orchards can do the work of 100,000 honeybees. Their biggest drawback is that beekeepers can increase their population only by a factor of three to eight a year; a honeybee colony can expand from several dozen individuals to 20,000 in a few months.
“We’re still in the development stage” of applying the USDA’s research, says David Moreland, CEO of AgPollen, which is supplying blue orchard bees to the California almond industry. Last season local almond growers were paying up to $300 for enough honeybees to work an acre, 10 times what they paid a decade ago, making the blue orchard bees cost-competitive, albeit only barely.
This article was originally published with the title Replacing the Honeybee.
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5 Comments
Add CommentWhen one considers how important the bee is to our agriculture, hence to our health and well-being, funding the initial development phase of a replacement should be relatively easy. It could even be agrued as a factor in global warming (perhaps that is a stretch).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf this bee can work as a pollinator its initial setup to function in agriculture should be underwritten by any number of sources. After that its cost should decrease by a considerable amount.
You're basing your arguments on the idea that today's capitalists are reasonable people. They aren't.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm glad that there are alternatives for pollination, but from where will we get... honey?!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGalaxy man - I am a forest owner, a guy who believes in free markets and a reasonable person. Not you or anybody else cares about my land and what grows there than I do. We grow forests sustainably these days in most of America. Each year, landowners in the southern U.S. alone plant more than a billion trees. Most farmers and orchard owners are similarly committed. Places with strong private property rights are also those places with the cleanest environments. The coorelation is strong enough to certainly imply that there is a causal relationship. In fact, no place w/o strong property rights protections is very clean at all. YOur offhand comment re today's capitalists not being reasonably is not supported by the evidence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMr Broadnax,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLike you, I own a good bit of forest. I agree that most small holders do a good job of caring for their land. However, it is my experience that large corporations are nothing like small and medium size personal landowners. Their interest is short term profit and they don't give a good goddam about the future. They don't believe in free markets either as they are forever trying to create monopoly situations. They are not reasonable nor are they care much about the social and environmental consequences of their actions.