From: [log in to unmask]
  We here at Bees-under-Glass (sorry, the full name is "Bees-under-Glass
Pollination Services Inc.", but many of our clients like to refer to us
as just plain "BUG") had a merry chuckle over the breakfast table this
morning as we read Peter Kevan's pronouncements about bumblebees and
greenhouses.  Could this be one of those cases, we thought, where one
could say: "his enthusiastic pursuit of ignorance is exceeded only by
his willingness to share that ignorance with the rest of the world"?.
  Anyway, it was a relief to read James Thomson's message later in the
day, which went a long way to set the record straight.  Yes, far from it
being the case that "the matter of continual rearing of reliable
[bumblebee] stock has yet to be fully mastered", the actual state of
affairs, both in Europe, New Zealand, and here in Canada, is that
bumblebee colonies are being raised in enormous quantities, entirely in
captivity, at all times of the year.  Even here, at Bees-under-Glass, we
are currently shipping nearly 300 colonies per month (a trivial amount
in comparison with the European giants)--so one wonders who exactly ARE
the "experts" that Kevan mentions when he says: "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"?
Sorry, Peter, providing the bumblebees sure ain't too much of a problem
for us, however much it may baffle the "experts" at U of Guelph . . .
 In fact, it is worth noting that our people at Bees-under-Glass find
it, if anything, EASIER to rear bumblebee colonies in the dead of winter
than later in the year.  This, of course, is because as a commercial
operation having to make our living entirely from the bees that we sell,
we have found it prudent to specialize in the production of colonies for
the very beginning of the spring crop.  As you might imagine, it is this
which gives us our competitive edge.
  In response to Dave Inouye's righteous concerns about the safety of
wild bumblebee populations (again, this is prompted by a serious error
in Kevan's message), perhaps I might be allowed to quote from a letter
that I recently wrote to a former colleague:
     "You should include BioBest among your list of European bumblebee
producers--after all, they WERE the first and are certainly either the
biggest or (after Koppert) the second biggest.  BioBest have made some
spectacular claims about their success in selective-breeding of bumble-
bees.  We, also, have had great success in this area--in fact, the word
from Leamington is that the bees which we have supplied since last
November (which is when the earliest spring-crop growers started their
flowering in Leamington this season) have been more vigorous and active
than those which were supplied last year.  The difference is that the
majority of colonies last year were from wild-caught queens, whereas
this year all of our colonies headed by queens which are themselves the
progeny of our stock colonies.  Notwithstanding this, we are of course
always on the lookout for "better" genetic material so, like the Euro-
peans, we continue to catch a small proportion of our queens in the
field.  But, both for Bees-under-Glass as well as for the major Europ-
ean producers, it would be wrong to give the impression (as seems to be
implied by a recent BEE-L message) that genetic problems are hindering
the commercial exploitation of bumblebees.  This may be true for some of
the minor players, but it has certainly not hampered the dominant prod-
ucers."  So, even it weren't for the fact that the "explosive" demogra-
phy of Bombus makes it very resistant to disasters like the onslaught of
Koppert's collecting teams, David should be reassured by the fact that
(for purely economic reasons if for no other) massive dependance on
wild-caught bumblebee queens is a thing of the past for us as well as
for the major European producers.
                                                     Cantley, Quebec.
 
--
Chris Plowright - via the University of Ottawa
Return addresses: via INTERNET: [log in to unmask]
                  via UUCP    : ...uunet!mitel!cunews!csi2!uplow!chris