Bublebees for the Berrry Patch

How would you like a job where you get to sleep for 8-9 months, wake up and work a week or so, then just lay back and reproduce for a few months while someone else feeds you and takes care of the kids. Then at a ripe old age, you die. Sound good? Well that is the life cycle of a queen bumblebee. We have a lot of bumblebees on the farm, especially when the clover is in bloom, but they come late spring after the berry field has been through its flowering season.

Pollination of the berry bushes is a necessity for a good berry crop. It is essential for optimal fruit set and maximum production. We have depended on our local wild honey bees that are in trees in the forest and bees from Johnson's Bee Farm, in Paris, that over winter hives down the road from us. Last year we were hit hard by a late freeze (April 7) in the middle of flowering and pollination. Perhaps half the crop was lost in the freeze and it stunned the bees. The result was less berries and they were not as big as they should have been.

This year we will bring in bumblebee hives from Minnesota. While we are letting nature pollinate our crop, we are assisting by starting the process early. Our quad of four hives is scheduled to arrive March 16 and the bees will live for 6-8 weeks.

The advantage of bumblebees over honey bees is that they will work in adverse weather conditions. Honey bees do not work in misty or rainy conditions, when it is colder than 59 degrees and when it is windy or heavy cloudy days. Bumblebees will work on days down to 41 degrees, windy days, cloudy days and will work on misty/rain days unless the rain is very heavy.

Honey bees collect pollen and take it to the hive to feed their babies, the queen, the workers in the hive and to produce honey. Bumblebees have no permanent colony. In nature, the queen emerges from the ground where she has been in hibernation since late summer in mid-spring and starts a colony. She will be able to lay eggs immediately and in 4-5 days the larvae emerge. She has to forage and collect pollen and nectar to feed these first larvae. When the first worker bees mature, the queen no longer forages and stays in the nest laying eggs. Each colony will have about 400 bees. The size of the colony depends on the amount of food available and the queen's health. Over time, productivity falls off as the workers die. The original queen stops laying eggs and also dies. The young queens and male drones that were produced mate and the young queens abandon the nest. Then the colony dies off. The queens bury into the ground and hibernate until the next spring and the cycle starts over again.

Apparently the only purpose of bumblebees is to pollinate plants. I find that to be one of nature's cycles that can not be easily explained.

1. Standard flight opening (in and out)
2. IN only flight opening (not normally used)
3. Transparent inner cover
4. Upper cover, which can be opened
5. Feeding hole through the wick
6. Feeding level, visible from the outside
7. New sugar water formula feed supply
8. The hive compartment with brood