TE>From: Tom Elliott <[log in to unmask]>
  >Date:         Fri, 24 May 1996 14:40:21 AST
  >Subject:      Bee & alfalfa
 
TE>     I seem to recall reading, I am not sure where now, that honeybees were
  >     still the primary pollinator of alfalfa (in spite of all their
  >     drawbacks).  Does anyone out there know if this is true or not?
 
TE>     Tom Elliott
  >     Eagle River,  Alaska
  >     Keeping Bees in the Frozen North
 
Hi Tom,
 
  Yes, honeybees are still the number one pollinator for Alfalfa seed
management in California. The bee's are being moved to the seed fields
right now and that movement will peak in the next ten days. Alfalfa seed
growers rent about 100,000 hives in California down from the good days
of the 70's when 250,000 hives were used.
 
  Over the years other species of bee's have been used to replace
honeybees in alfalfa flower pollination. NONE of these has worked as
advertised and few of these so called native pollinators which are not
native to this area but are captured, dug up, and imported into the
state. The most they have accomplished is to supplement honeybee
pollination at a very high cost. Beekeeper's always have benefited from
grower efforts to manage bees of any kind, as they soon find out that
however you do it the cost is much grater then expected and more then
beekeepers have been willing to rent hives, at this time it is about $30
per hive. Also wild bees other then honeybees suffer from similar
problems as honeybees do: disease, pests, predators, and PESTICIDES.
There also is a strain or sub species of leaf cutter bee's that
generated much publicity as the "killer" leafcutter bee's a few years
back. Not because they had ever attacked and killed anybody, but because
they would take over other sub species of leaf cutter bees boles or
holes. They were not thought to be such good alfalfa pollinators as they
were less differential in what flowers they would work, all a lot of BS
if you ask me, and I know a little bit about it because the "killer"
bees came from my own bee board I kept at my home for many years and had
originally capture in a wild area when at one time they were unbelievable
numerous and a pest to anyone growing ornamentals such as found around
most any home. BTW, my leaf cutter bees to this day have not been
attacked by the pests others have had problems with such as leaf
cutter chalk brood.
 
Alfalfa seed growers use about 2 to 3 good honeybee hives per acre, and
most still demand they be spread in small groups of 12-24 around the
edge and in the field making it a lot of extra work for the beekeepers
involved and adding nothing to the total yield of alfalfa seed then if
all the bees were place in truck load lots near the fields. Growers
don't understand that God gave bee's wings and some old half arsed
research was done years ago that shows better yields closer to the hives
is still relied on. This research also showed no difference in total
yields between fields with bee's on the edge and bee's in the field as
most any harvester driver would tell you.
 
Pesticide use is still the number one beekeeping problem in the alfalfa
pollination business and in some areas the extra loss from using your
bees to pollinate can exceed the value of the money received in rent
and honey.
 
RULE #1, "Using honeybees for Alfalfa seed pollination is good farming
practice, but is a BAD beekeeping practice." Real beekeepers pollinate
alfalfa for the cash flow, bee locations, and bad judgement. I don't
want to hurt anyone's feeling, but I feel that way about any practice
that over populates an area with bees to the determent of the bees. It
must be my age, but I learned long ago from some good beekeepers that
pasture is #1, and was to be used in a way that did not harm the bees.
The big difference between California beekeepers and the rest of the
beekeeping world is that beekeepers here measure beekeeping pasture
or territory by the field with nothing between one beekeepers bees
and another's but at the most a fence or roadway. It is easy to
understand why we all have the same problems be they pest, pesticide,
or low honey production.
 
In the real beekeeping world here in California the demand for bees for
the almond bloom over the years has caused a increase in the numbers of
bee hives (not bees in the hives) each beekeeper wants to have, the more
boxes (hives) he has the more income from almond pollination. Many of
these beekeepers have no summer home for their bee's other then the seed
and melon fields of the great interior valley, so they pollinate and
find themselves on a tread mill much the same as the pesticide one
beekeepers are now into. It all has little to do with keeping good
healthy bees or producing big honey crops, its more a trade off of
honeybees for dollars. Nothing wrong with it, I did it myself for years
being the first beekeeper to get $10, when little or nothing was being
charged and the first to get $20 to pollinate almonds making many
friends in the beekeeping industry and making the black list of many
almond growers, but it is not good beekeeping anyway, though it may be
good beekeeping business.<BG>
 
In the end, if we are at the beginning, it is the keeper of bees that
is the real endangered species and I believe that we are getting close
to the end of beekeeping as I have known it. There will always bee a
new generation of beekeepers as there has always been, but their numbers
may be much less in the near future.
 
                             ttul Andy-
 
 
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