Tag Archives: pollination

2015 Survey Q & A – Quitting Bee Management

Q-Thinking of quitting bee management and just turning land area into pollinator friendly vegitation. Tired of colony loss and loss of $!

A – I certainly sympathize with you on the discouraging continuation of high losses and the expense of replacement. We seem no closer to finding workable solutions than when we started this 8 year ago. I wish you well whatever direction you decide to go.

2015 Survey Q & A – Hive Placement & Pollination

Q – Do you move your hives during the Summer to take advantage of honey flows? Do you pollinate multiple crops? (almonds, pears, apples, cranberries, carrots, sunflower)
 —
A-Thank you for sending us your information on overwintering success. You asked about pollination when you sent the data. Small scale beekeepers generally do not rent their colonies for pollination of agricultural crops but our larger scale do rent bee colonies to an average of 5 crops. All the crops you asked about do require and benefit from honey bee pollination. We do a separate pollination economics survey at OSU  – our report from last year was published in the June 2014 BEE LINE newsletter of the Oregon State Beekeepers. You can see this report by accessing the website orsba.org and checking on the Bee Line archive information.