Tropical Flowering Tree

Fruit growers should certainly be more interested in beekeeping than most professional beekeepers. In the long run bees are worth more to the fruit industry than they are to the producers of honey, though many growers are still skeptical of this fact. I'm sure that most of them know that many kinds of flowers are pollinated by insects and that certain fruits are sterile unless fertilized with pollen from a different variety, but they hardly seem to consider that honeybees are of a great importance to this work.

If, heaven forbid, every honeybee in the United States were to die today, the loss in next year's fruit crop (among many other things) would most likely be catastrophic and would probably amount to as much or more than the total product of those same bees in honey and wax. And yet, for reasons unknown, this massive benefit to the fruit industry has been considered as only an afterthought, one to be accepted as a matter of course but seldom to be intentionally provided for.

In my mention as to the effect on a single crop of fruit, perhaps I should explain in a little more detail and say that this calculated loss is in a way hypothetical. It would not work out to the same loss every season for the simple reason that the value of the bees as fruit pollinators is not a constant each year.

For instance, next season might be one of those rare years when the weather conditions are such that pollination could take place without very much assistance from the insects. In this case the loss due to the absence of bees would be slight, if noticed at all. However, with that being said, in a bad year for normal wind blown pollination the bees would make all the difference in the world between a full crop and a total failure.

When our trees are given a period of bright, warm, windy weather while they are in bloom we can usually count on a good crop of fruit because under such conditions the pollen blows from tree to tree and is carried long distances by the wind. Also, during such weather there are always plenty of other insects browsing around the flowers, and they, to a lesser degree than do the bees, carry the fertilizing elements from tree to tree and will lead to a better crop of fruit.

But if the trees bloom during a period of cold, wet, calm weather (which happens more often than not in the more northern areas of the U.S.) then we certainly can not expect natural or wind fertilization to be much of help. Under these conditions the pollen is rendered heavy by the excess of moisture, it does not blow from tree to tree because of its weight, and the wild bugs do not stir out of the sheltered places in which they have taken refuge from the cold wet weather.

But it is in just such seasons that the honeybees get in their best work. While it is true that they will not fly when the weather is cold and rainy, they will, however, very quickly emerge and get to work if the sun shines even just a small amount.

There may be but one hour of sunshine in a whole day, but the honey-bees will be out and clawing their way over the apple blooms at the same time all of the other wild insects are still turning over in their minds whether to go to work today or to just wait until tomorrow.

In some seasons the native insects will not appear in any significant numbers to be of any use in pollinating. If the preceding winter was colder than normal they may not have multiplied to the extent that there are enough to even be of any use. None of these insects winter over as adults in any considerable numbers, while the honeybee passes the winter, not as an individual, tucked away under protecting scales of bark or hidden in hollow logs, but in vast colonies, strong in numbers and ready and eager to make the most of the first flowers that appear in the spring.

After spending most of his 46 years living on a farm, Brett McEllhiney has decided it is time to pass on some of his love for the outdoors and natural living by writing about it. For more information on Natural Beekeeping and beekeeping in general, please check out his natural beekeeping site If you would like to build your own hive, I recommend checking out It's the only hive construction guide I recommend!