Gavin Ramsay wrote:

> By
> recent standards we're having a poor summer and the spring was late. 
> Bumble bees are around in numbers, but maybe when that gentleman's
> broad beans (= faba or fava beans) were in flower the bees were
> elsewhere. 

An excellent observation. The problem was probably not the lack of 
bumblebees but the lack of other pollinators, including honeybees. I 
have noticed that some bumblebee proponents tend to discount honeybees 
in the combined pollination effort. That came across clearly to me in 
a bumblebee pollination study in the blueberry fields in Maine. Really 
bad study that showed bumblebees could do what 60,000 honey bee 
colonies could do and even better.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

****************************************************
* General Information About BEE-L is available at: *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/default.htm   *
****************************************************