INDUSTRY NEWS
Efficient use of bee hives for pollination
Researchers moved pollen in between flowers of compatible almond varieties using a paintbrush to see if it would help improve the percentage of flowers converted to nuts .
THERE ' S no denying pollination is critical for almond production , but with the cost of bee hives skyrocketing , what ’ s the most efficient way to use them ? Professor Saul Cunningham investigated this issue between 2011 and 2017 , when he worked as a research scientist with the CSIRO . He told attendees at the recent Australian Almonds R & D Forum in Robinvale about what he discovered .
Orchards size makes pollination challenging Professor Cunningham said there ’ s 50,000 flowers per tree . If you multiply that by the hundreds of rows , there ’ s thousands of trees in almond orchards . It ’ s very hard to get the right number of pollinators to the area for a short period of time .
“ It ’ s an overwhelming resource . It ’ s great that the almond industry is booming , but it creates that challenge of how do we get enough bees to support that many flowers ,” Professor Cunningham said . For nuts to be produced , the bees need to get pollen from flowers on a different variety of tree , which generally means the bees need to fly to a different row . Professor Cunningham said it ’ s difficult to track exact bee movements , but they want to fly to the next available bit of food . “ In most instances that ’ s another flower on the same tree or the next tree in the same row . Choosing to go between rows is a much rarer event in the overall suite of bee activity ,” he said . Professor Cunningham said people behave in a similar way .
10 In A Nutshell - Spring 2023 Vol 24 Issue 3