>> Cane is now advising almond growers on how to have
>> "a more balanced portfolio of pollinators"

randy oliver wrote:

> Not likely, with the total absence of other flowering plants in
> and around the almond orchard.

Bill Truesdell wrote:

> Even worse than that. Check the economics to have the
> numbers needed to do the job and how to get those numbers
> from native pollinators.

> It all gets down to two simple facts that are omitted from any NP
> information. Numbers and transportable. Honeybees can supply
> both and the NP neither for large scale agriculture

Randy & Bill, when the NP people talk to reporters, they make
it sound like wild native bees could deliver a comparable degree of
pollination if farmers supplied them with "flowering hedgerows,
fallow land and crop diversification."

Example: In a July 15 Seattle Times newspaper article,
http://tinyurl.com/ys3fbw Scott Black, executive director
of the Xerces Society told the reporter:

"hundreds of species of native bees are available for crop
pollination if only their habitat were properly managed. That
means flowering hedgerows, fallow land, crop diversification."
 
"Using a variety of bees for pollination means less threat to
the food supply from a single mite, parasite or disease. "We
need to diversify our portfolio of pollinators," Black says.
 
Paul Cherubini
El Dorado, Calif.

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