Vegetables
Matthew Kroger Matthew Kroger
shared this article 5 years ago
Topics: Soil Health, Livestock/Meat, Cover Crops, Vegetables, Beekeeping, Fruit, Stone Fruit,

Many will find this hard to believe because of the conditioning we received... “Managed honey bee colonies supplement the work of natural wild pollinators, not the other way around. In a study of 41 different crop systems worldwide, honeybees only increased yield in 14 percent of the crops. Who did all the pollination? Native bees and other insects. A whole host of little blueberry bees, squash bees, and orchard bees co-evolved with many of our fruits and vegetables. It makes sense they would be good at pollination. In watermelons, native bees do 90 percent of the pollination. Native bees improve fruit production in apples. Native bee pollination creates twice as much fruit as honey bees in blueberries. In tomatoes, native bee species increase fruit production significantly.”

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