In response to the posting on Bumblebees as pollinators of greenhouse tomatoes, it is worth noting that the success which has been acheived in Europe with Bombus terrestris is being paralleled in Canada with North American native species of Bombus. Work has been completed in Ontario and in British Columbia to demonstrate the efficacy of the use of Bombus in greenhouses. A note was published last year in one of the trade magazines on the subject (I do not have a copy, nor the name of the magazine at hand) and a paper in now in press in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Ontario on the results of another set of experiments. Acta Horticulturae (most recent issue) has some papers on the subject, but from Europe and New Zealand. In Canada, we have produced the first issue of a newsletter "Bumblebee- quest" devoted to the use of bumblebees in agriculture/horticulture. I will be happy to arrange for interested people to receive more detailed information on any of the above. Please message me directly. In Europe and New Zealand there is great enthusiasm, and a burgeoning new industry associated with the import/export of bumblebee colonies for greenhouse pollination applications. The claims that the companies involved (Koppert, Brinkman, Bunting and perhaps others) that the bees are native is correct in that even the New Zealand bees are the result of early introduction of bumblebees from Britain to NZ for red clover pollination. Thus, at the species level, nativeness is assured. However, some assertions that the genetic stock is native to the region where the bees are used seem unreliable and some bumblebee scientists in Europe have expressed their concern about the shipping of southern European B. terrestris to northern Europe. In Canada, the authorities will not allow the import of European bumblbees. For the use of bumblebees to become throroughly entrenched into agriculture the matter of continual rearing of reliable stock has yet to be fully mastered. I understand that even in Europe and New Zealand, the cultured stocks of B. terrestris must be infused from time to time with new genes from the wild populations. In Canada, progress seems not to be quite as far along. Certainly, providing bumblebees for pollination of the late winter flowering batch of tomato plants presents a problem which is well recognized by the experts here.