Here's why I ask: I shared a stage last week with the Curator of Invertebrates for the St. Louis Zoo, talking about pollinators at the Missouri State Fair. In a discussion about the superiority of some native species over honeybees for certain crops, he asserted that honeybees are incapable of pollinating blueberries, as that plant requires buzz pollination that only things like blueberry bees and bumblebees can accomplish.

But I thought back to an article I'd published in the Missouri State Beekeepers newsletter a few years back (found at http://mostatebeekeepers.org/msba_newsletters/2009/Newsletter%20June%202009.pdf) wherein Howard Thompson, fellow beekeeper and member of the Blueberry Council of Missouri, writes of the importance of honeybees to blueberries. Howard even goes so far as to specify different cultivars and how many hives per acre are recommended for sufficient pollination.

So who's right?

Eugene Makovec
Missouri USA

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