Hobbies And Interests
Pollination
Bumble bees are responsible for pollinating important crops such as red clover, alfalfa, peas, runner beans, tomatoes, raspberries, apples and strawberries. They pollinate flowers in the early spring and late fall as they can fly when the temperature is only 50 degrees. They can visit 10 to 18 flowers in a minute. Bumble bees have longer tongues than honeybees so they can pollinate long, narrow flowers and their branching hairs are designed perfectly to pick up and move pollen.
Why Not Honey?
Although bumble bees make delicious honey, they make it in such small quantities that it is not harvested. They store enough for rainy days or windy days and a small supply for the queen. Usually, only the queens survive the winter, so there's no need for bumblebees to store large quantities of honey in the hive.
Economics of Pollination
In North America, 30 percent of food for human consumption originates from plants pollinated by bees, according to Bumblebee.org. In the United States, crops pollinated by insects were worth $20 billion as of 2000. The estimated total value of bees to Canadian agriculture is about $782 million as of 2008, according to Hinterland Who's Who. Bumble bees are the chief pollinators of a number of crops, including oilseed rape, sunflowers, currants and mustard.
Off To Work
Commercial production of bumble bees for greenhouse pollination began in the 1980s and they are particularly useful for pollinating tomatoes, which need the bumble bees hefty buzz to release their pollen. Today, almost every European tomato is produced with the help of bumble bees as are most North American greenhouse tomatoes. The bees replace labor-intensive hand pollination involving an artificial buzzer. As of 1997, about a quarter of a million colonies were reared for greenhouse use to pollinate tomatoes, cabbage, kiwi, peppers, eggplant, strawberries, blueberries and cranberries. Bumble bee colonies are shipped to growers in maintenance-free hives made of recycled cardboard.