Pollinating by Hand
Question:
I’m a writer for a small newspaper in San Diego and in reading one of your books on month to month organic gardening in Southern California, I was interested by your idea on hand pollinating fruit tress due to lack of bee activity. I’m interested in writing on the subject of saving the bees and have read your recent posts on the problem and solutions.
Can you give us a good tip on how regular folks who are amateur gardeners or just want to maintain a nice lawn, can identify the good bees from the bad ones? I believe most people just find it easier to grab a can of wasp and hornet killer, not realizing the damage that does to the good bees.
Also, you mention that if you don’t see any bee activity in February, your tree may not bear fruit. For which types of trees is hand pollination most feasible, it’s seems like a daunting task. Any additional tips or comments are greatly appreciated.
Answer from Pat:
Hand pollination takes much less time than you might imagine. After receiving this email, I did a sample test to see how long it takes me to pollinate citrus blossoms. It is possible on dwarf lemon or orange tree to stand next to the tree and pollinate as many as one hundred blossoms in five minutes. Using a small sable paint brush to go from blossom to blossom dabbing and swirling the brush into each one, a human being can go faster than bees. So if you were to spend 5 minutes a day for a week pollinating the blossoms on your dwarf citrus, (and also water and fertilize appropriately) you could expect 700 lemons or oranges a few months later. If a citrus tree were taller, you would need a three-legged orchard ladder, you could move it from place to place and maybe spend ten or fifteen minutes a day on the task, and might end up with thousands of fruit. (All folks with taller fruit trees need to have one of these three-legged ladders in order to prune and care for their fruit trees and harvest fruit safely. I have had one for many years and we use it frequently for garden tasks. Four-legged ladders are unsteady on uneven ground and can cause accidents.)
On page 126 of my book I describe methods for hand-pollinating cherimoya, which requires two steps since you must collect the pollen at night and spread it the next day. I explain carefully in the book why this is so and how to do the job. A tiny night-flying wasp or moth actually performs this service in wild places where cherimoya is native but not here. Gardeners who spend a few minutes pollinating ten or twenty cherimoya blossoms once a week year-round, as I describe in my book, will have an abundant harvest of these expensive fruits year round, not just in fall and not just a few fruits as happens otherwise. (These trees bear blossoms in waves of bloom year round.)
I also explain there how to hand pollinate quince and guava trees either by hand or with a long-handled duster. I demonstrated all these tasks many years ago on a television show I had in those days on Channel 39 (NBC) in San Diego. Some months later the owners of the guava tree got back to me in fall and said they had such an abundant harvest of delicious fruit that they were eating all they could and giving bags away. They had never had more than one or two fruits prior to that year. From now on they said they would always use a feather duster to pollinate as I had done and wanted to know where I got mine. I still have it today. It is a piece of Australian sheep’s fleece glued onto a long stick so as to make a light-weight cylinder of shaggy fleece that easily picks up the abundant pollen on guava and spreads it around like a cloud of dust. I stood on my three-legged ladder to do this job. I took it along with me in the back of my car as I often did in those days, driving around with that ladder sticking out the back with a red flag on it!
You also might notice the Anna apples on the front cover of my book. I hand pollinated the apple blossoms that later became those very fruits. There were few bees that winter and only a few blossoms on the Dorset apple tree I had planted for cross-pollination (‘Ein Schemer’ is a better tree to use as a pollinator for Anna), so instead of waiting for the bees I did the job myself. I only did it once that year and it only took a few minutes. When Anna apples are long and skinny and not plump as they should be, they have no seeds inside. This is a sign they have not been properly cross-pollinated with another apple variety.
Regarding bees and wasps, there are no bad bees. Only bad people who are killing them and not knowing how to behave around these mostly gentle creatures who are highly beneficial.
Thank you so much for writing, for spreading the word about my book, and please don’t hesitate to ask more questions.
I am grateful to you for your intention to write about bees in the newspaper including especially the fact that gardeners may be killing bees without meaning to do them any harm whatsoever. (See the entries under the heading “Bees” elsewhere on this website.) It is extremely unfortunate that most commercial synthetic lawn fertilizers are now “multi-purpose” and thus intended to “control” (i.e.: kill) white grubs and also in many cases to kill weeds, all in one step while feeding the lawn. The tragedy is that most gardeners think this one-step process is a great idea. They do not read the label or even if they did might not realize that the product included for control of white grubs in most products is Merit (imidacloprid). Imidacloprid is a systemic insecticide that is absorbed by plants such as grass, flowers, and trees, and kills white grubs not by poisoning them but by confusing them so they no longer remember how to do the things they need to do to survive. (More about this product and its dangers and about other pesticides that harm bees, is discussed under “Bees”, as mentioned above.)
Now to reply to your query about how to identify “good bees.” The answer to that question is that all bees are good, thus any bee you see is a good bee and should not be harmed by human beings in any way, whether by swatting, trapping, poisoning, or simply depriving it of its God-given right to multiply, take care of its young, and gather with other bees in communal nests or hives or make solitary nests according to its habit, and incidentally by so doing also helping human beings to stay alive on this planet too. Bees of all types, including European, Africanized, and all species of wild or native bees, work together to pollinate about one third of all human crops. Honey bees also pollinate alfalfa, which in turn feeds cattle and in turn giving us milk and meat. Thus without bees we would have mighty little fruit (only those we could hand pollinate) and no meat or dairy products. If all our bees were to die it would be an environmental disaster of mammoth proportions and would doubtless lead to widespread starvation.
A fact worth noting is that imidacloprid was developed by and is manufactured by Bayer Crop Science, a German company. Imidacloprid is widely used in Europe, but the company refuses to admit that its products kill bees and this fact is difficult to prove. Meanwhile, bees in agricultural areas of France and other European countries are seriously suffering from deaths due to CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder). Too bad for them. Meanwhile, bees living in hives on roof tops in Paris are completely healthy and they make excellent honey from the nectar they gather from the flowers growing in Parisian parks and window boxes. (You can purchase Parisian rooftop honey in some street markets there.) Why are these city bees in such good shape while the country bees are all confused? The poor country bees can’t remember how to get back to their hives and just fly around until they die. Obviously the city bees do not have CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder.) I would like to suggest that there is a very good reason for this. Parisian parks do not usually contain lawns. Instead, the areas between flowerbeds are covered with gravel. Thus no one is pouring imidacloprid on the lawns to kill white grubs. The flowers are thus not absorbing imidaclopirid and in the absence of of this systemic pesticide—Viola!—the bees are just fine.
Please read the two paragraphs on the subject of honey bees on Page 278 of my organic gardening book and also please read the boxes on pages 280 to 281 which describe the various kinds of bees you are likely to see in your garden.
But now I want to suggest why some people might think there is such a thing as a “bad bee”. One reason is that a very small number of people are so seriously allergic to bee stings that a single sting if not promptly treated could kill them, but the number of people afflicted in this way is so infinitesimal compared to the whole, that it is a non-issue for the vast majority. In the public imagination among city dwellers, however, the knowledge that just one person might have been killed by a bee makes the sight of a bee strike fear to their hearts. All people who know they are allergic should carry the medical bee-sting antidote kit appropriate for dealing with this problem when out in nature and should seek medical attention if stung and should never bat at bees which only makes them fearful and buzz around in a threatening way. And let us remember, also, that it is not the bees fault that some people are allergic to its sting. The sting of a bee is also highly beneficial as a medicine for other people, for example against arthritis. And when a bee stings it dies from the process, thus no bee wants to sting you if it can possibly avoid it.
In recent years domestic bees got some bad press because the Africanized bee accidentally was imported into America and has mixed with our European bees. Africanized bees are more territorial about their nests and will sometimes attack and even chase people who get too close for their comfort. In a few cases in Texas and one desert location in eastern California, people have been attacked by Africanized bees and received multiple stings, but the whole issue has been largely overblown. Nonetheless, all homeowners need to keep an eye on their property especially in spring when bees are more likely to swarm. If you see a bee swarm or think you know where feral bees have made a nest and it threatens the safety of people, look in the yellow pages for beekeepers and find one who will come out and catch the bees. This is a far better idea than calling a pest control company who will kill the bees. I had bees in an owl house for a few years and when two or three years ago I finally needed to prune the Torrey pine tree where is was located, my gardener, a beekeeper, climbed the tree, brought down the hive and took the bees to Mexico where he keeps them to this day in his garden. We all enjoyed the delicious honey that we found inside the owl house. It was the best I ever ate, and none of us got a single sting.
One final thought, once while driving across the vast plains and rolling hills of East Africa I noticed the many bee houses in the trees by the side of the road and thought long and hard about how for many thousands of years the Africans had learned to live in harmony with the African bee. And their bees are not simply “Africanized.” They are full fledged African bees. No one is taking away their queen every year, and changing her for a European one, as our bee keepers are now doing, just to make sure the blood line is not too African. The African village people hollow out an approximately three-foot long piece of tree trunk, leaving the bark on the outside, and leaving solid wood on one end. They leave a big hole in the other end for themselves and the bees and hang the log with that open end pointing north Then they hoist the log up into a thorn tree usually about a mile or two distant from their home or village. When after a few years bees have had time to find the log and make a home in it and build up a supply of honey, the African villagers return at night with fire and smoking rags on sticks. They climb the tree, and take a supply of honey but always leaving some for the bees so they can carry on without having to vacate the hive. In some places there were as many as 50 of these man-made hives hanging from the trees. The nice thing about having some of these African bees mixed into our bees here is that they are less susceptible to varroa mite that was decimating our hives a few years ago. Africanized bees look just like European bees. I work in my garden with them right around me and they are a little bit more “buzzy-aroundy” than bees used to be, but not at all aggressive, and they are just about as good as European bees as pollinators.
Thank you for the wealth of information you’ve given me on this subject. I believe I could write a few articles on everything you’ve covered. I will try and address the issues in the most responsible manner possible and let people know your book is a great resource. I’m also getting insight from a bee removal company and the California State Beekeepers Association. I’m having trouble locating a local beekeeper, although I believe we should have at least one.
From what I’ve read, it seems you’d advocate the use of a beekeeper over an exterminator or removal company — is this correct? You also say that we should learn to co-exist in harmony with Africanized bees, though they may be more territorial and aggressive if provoked. To what extent should we tolerate swarms or hives in our vicinity? The problem for most people, I think, is that they are 1) scared and don’t want to get stung 2) have heard of Africanized bees and don’t want to take chances 3) want to remove the hives but can’t afford to pay a company or beekeeper to do it (in which case, they’d rather just grab a bottle of spray and try to do it themselves).
It would be great to be able to call a beekeeper who could just remove the bees for little or no cost (in these hard times) and put them in a more beneficial location, but they are becoming harder and harder to locate, from what I understand. It seems the city offers no help in these “sticky” situations. Any suggestions on how to find a good beekeeper?
Try the San Diego Bee Keepers Association at (619) 251-1943 or send an email tocontactus@adkinsbees.com. Others to try are: Randy Davis 760-846-7091; Voss Bees 877-427-2818, Bill’s Bees, 951-326-7916, and David Beutler in Fallbrook, 760-723-7782. Start phoning around and you will find others. There were many more and they cover the whole state. Some offer a free service. Phone, ask them questions, track it down.
Thus, despite the economic environment, enterprising folks may be able to find bee keepers who are willing to take bees away in return for the bees, as my gardener, who is a bee keeper, gladly did for me. Bees are not pests, so one needs to avoid pest-control companies if possible whose only idea is kill the bees. So, yes, indeed I do feel it is far preferable not to kill the bees if it is at all possible not to do so.
In regard to how much we should tolerate bees, as I stated above, I believe in removing bees alive wherever possible. If bees have made a hive inside a home that may be impossible. Bees should be removed quickly so they don’t have time to make honey which will drip down walls and attract wax moths and rodents if not maintained by bees. There are a few bee experts who know how to make bees quickly exit a structure, but this is a trade secret involving a white powder that looks like flour by putting it into the hole where the bees enter and exit. What this powder may be is a mystery, and it may be a poison. A man put some down a hole through which bees were entering and exiting the space under a Spanish tile roof of a home near my home. The man would not say what the powder was, but he said it did not harm the bees. The bees flew away that day and they never came back. He closed up the hole and they never returned. I do not currently know anyone who knows how to do this. As with many necessities it sometimes requires a hunt to find the service one requires.
Re: to what extent should we tolerate swarms or hives in our vicinity. First, a swarm may frighten people but it will not attack them unless the people are attacking the swarm. A swarm is looking for a new home and it is usually benign. Contact a bee keeper immediately upon seeing a swarm so the keeper can come and catch the bees. Otherwise they will set up a feral hive and if the nest is in a shed or human habitation the owners may bring in an extermination company to kill the bees.
The articles you plan to write should make clear that no homeowner should ever use hornet or bee sprays. A man in Florida sprayed honeybees with a pesticide and the bees killed him.
Regarding your remarks about people being scared, not wanting to get stung, hearing of Africanized bees, not wanting to take chances, not being able to afford the money to pay to have bees removal, and grabbing a bottle of spray, these comments seem to be statements, not questions. I agree with all your statements. You are telling me how ignorant people think and behave and indeed they do behave in these ways, so I cannot disagree with you on that, but I would add again that anybody who would spray bees with poison is more ignorant than most and probably won’t live to be stupid again. He or she will get stung and if the bees are Africanized, quite likely stung to death. You and I may try to educate people on bees but we will never reach everyone. Even among people who read what you and I write, there will be those who cannot overcome a lifelong prejudice against bees and replace it with a friendly attitude.
I cannot erase all your concerns but I can suggest a cure: The cure for fear of bees is knowledge about bees. Knowledge about bees leads to fascination with bees. Fascination with bees leads to love of bees. Love of bees casts out fear of bees.
We just launched a pollinator product for gardeners. We are a small company, but we have an innovative product. We enjoyed your commentary on pollinating by hand.
Further, we would love to get your feedback on our website. Keep up the fine work.
Sincerely,
Randy Dilday
http://www.mybeebow.com
(509)251-4904
Your product is most interesting and I like your website and the story included on it. Your product sounds good even though the fabric is not organic since it contains a fabric derived from petroleum—please correct me if this is not so. Nonetheless, I am not a purist. Most organic gardeners still use petroleum in their cars. Your product sounds as if it would help backyard vegetable gardeners to attract bumblebees to vegetables in raised beds. My daughters each have gardens in raised beds where we could try it out. I have not seen bumble bees in either of their gardens.
I would like to try out your product and would be grateful if you could send me a sample. I must be careful what I recommend on my website since I try to keep it all organic.
I am very eager to help folks out there learn how to garden and to do so organically without harming our precious environment, or themselves, their kids, or pets.
Meanwhile, I speak to thousands of persons at my public appearances and can suggest your product to them, with a caveat inserted that it’s not entirely organic. Being an organic gardener is not a religion but a matter of common-sense choices. Folks also need to know that a bare spot of garden soil is necessary for bumble bees since they nest in the ground. If the entire garden is covered with a thick layer of mulch there will be few or no bumble bees. Zinnias also are one of the best attractants for bumblebees. Whenever I grow a bed of flowering zinnias I have a plethora of bumblebees and other native bees.
Good informations.I am learning a lot here in South Florida.Miami-Dada to be exact.Thanks.
Thanks for kind comment. Glad this was helpful advice for you in Florida.