Allen said:

> Do you have any idea if a honeybee might help
> spread pollen to the female flowers of the chestnuts?

I am constantly amazed and amused by growers.  They will pay
serious money to try any random product, and the more outrageous
the claims made, the quicker they will buy it and try it.

But rent some hives?  Before they do anything that "crazy", they
want a solved Dirac Equation, Feynman diagrams, and documented
proof notarized by a Supreme Court Justice that the bees will
increase their yield to the point where they can afford to buy
a 1966 Lamborghini Miura.

Lots of people say that chestnuts are "wind pollinated", but
McGregor's has a section on chestnuts that quotes multiple
people saying that bees do pollinate chestnuts.
http://www.beeculture.com/beeculture/book/chap5/chestnut.html

From my own experience:

a) We are blessed with several large chestnuts.  These are
   the edible sort, producing nuts with more spines than a
   sea urchin.

b) When we first bought the place, there were very few nuts.
   (One could walk barefoot under these trees without fear.)

c) We have happened to have a few hives within about 800
   yards of the chestnut trees every year.

d) We started getting more nuts than we can use, even though
   the chestnut trees have had no specific "care" of any sort.
   (I can't recall when this started, but it was after we
   had dismissed the chestnuts as varieties that were more
   "decorative" than "productive".)

At risk of making an classic error of causality, I'd say that the two
events are connected, but I've never looked to see if bees were
visiting the chestnuts.  I'll make a note to check when the chestnuts
bloom, which should be later this month.

And its funny that the subject mentions the "chestnet".
I thought I was the only one to use this term.

What does this fellow use to control the chestnut weevils that get into
the nuts?  I have to erect "chestnets" (surplus parachutes) under each
tree to catch the bulk of the nuts before they hit the ground, but I have
yet to come up with a rigging approach that can survive the winds of even
a moderate thunderstorm without tangling or ripping out several stakes.
They also look silly - several people have asked me if the artist "Christo"
was a regular summer house guest.

                jim

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