>At 04:39 AM 5/23/96 -0500, you wrote:
>>
>>
>>my hives right next to fields belonging to a dairy farm.Usual crop includes
>>alfalfa(which bees dont work), corn, or soybeans(both of which ARE worked)
>>in addition to the various wildflowers growing in/ around the fields.I
>
>        My region is also dairy farming, exclusively, and I think the reason
>        bees don't work alfalfa is because the value of this crop as silage
>        after the bloom is much less than if it is cut BEFORE the plant puts
>        out blossoms. All farmers that I have asked say they do their cutting
>        well before the alfalfa crop is in bloom.
 
It's been pretty adequately demonstrated that the reason honeybees don't
work alfalfa is that they literally won't tolerate being hit on the head
every time they trip a flower (which is what happens when an Apis visits
alfalfa) - as long as there are alternative flowers available, alfalfa is
bottom of the list because of the physical difficulty operating the
flowers. That's why folks have been using things like Alkali bees and
Leafcutter bees for decades to pollinate their alfalfa.
Sincerely,
 
Doug Yanega       Illinois Natural History Survey, 607 E. Peabody Dr.
Champaign, IL 61820 USA      phone (217) 244-6817, fax (217) 333-4949
 affiliate, Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Dept. of Entomology
          http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu:80/~dyanega/my_home.html
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82