> Our bee survey revealed that there is an impressive diversity of native
bee species in the NY orchards we surveyed.

Note the careful wording of the above, and the other snippets quoted.

The cited studies merely **found** native bees, they made no attempt to
measure their effectiveness in terms of pollination.

All that was offered was baseless speculation - "with sufficient habitat,
they can provide all the necessary pollination".  This means that they
clearly did NOT provide "the necessary pollination", or this would have been
the headline. Hand-waving about what an insect **might** do is not something
a grower can depend upon.  These guys have margins that depend on optimal
pollination.

Native bees are a lot like the acupuncture and Reki therapies offered by
otherwise legitimate hospitals.  These "complementary therapies" or
"alternative therapies" don't help, but on the other hand, they don't hurt,
and may be able to leverage some morale and placebo effect on some of the
more impressionable patients.  But if they actually worked as a therapy, and
actually cured anything, they would not be called "complementary" or
"alternative".

They would be called "medicine", wouldn't they?

Likewise, unless growers are willing to agree that they have optimal
pollination (and hence, yield) as a result, how can it be called
"pollination"?

I laughed to see the inclusion of the crop "apples" in the list of crops in
one of the papers quoted.  Apple growers want that bloom pollinated as fast
as possible, and then they want the bees gone by the next dawn, so they can
spray poison to "thin" the bloom and assure nice-sized apples.  (Yes, some
portion of the valuable work done by the bees is overtly and deliberately
wasted by the grower, sad as it seems.)  

But with all this spraying, what chance does a poor solitary bee have to
live out its life-cycle?  None.  Apple-pollinating beekeepers count hives
multiple times both in and out of each orchard, as any hives left behind
will not survive even a single day of spraying.

And even if one did attempt to place solitary bees in an orchard, moving
them after pollination would dislodge so many eggs from their precarious
perches atop piles of pollen moistened with some nectar, the beekeeper would
be left without any viable cocoons for next spring.  (The astute reader will
notice that this detailed level of information illustrates just how long and
hard I tried to make these bees work in the orchards.)

Anyone with half a brain can deploy honey bees anywhere they might be
needed.  Bumblebees can be deployed, but not early enough for apples, nor do
bumbles like apples very much.  

The other bees are either "there" or they aren't.  They are the stuff of
folklore and small-scale studies by pointy-headed escapees from the ivory
tower who have never even cut an understory, let alone nurtured a tree to
the age where it made fruit.  Pumpkins?  Has a pumpkin grower actually ever
paid a beekeeper what he said he would? :)  Anyone? 

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