NEXT DAY SHIPPING INCLUDED
(Please allow 2 to 10 days to process bumblebee orders.)
You don't have to be a bee keeper to use one of our
hives. All you have to do is remove the hive from the shipping box,
place it near your garden on a cinderblock or bricks, open the hive
entrance, and walk away. The bumblebees will do the rest. Sheltering the
hive from the elements (sun and rain) can further enhance your hive's
performance.
Bumble bees, have become an excellent alternative for
the fruit set of tomatoes. This was a very labor-intensive job.
Bumblebees are used world-wide for the pollination of
tomato crops resulting in enormous savings in labor costs, improvements
of fruit quality and sometimes even increased production.
In recent years the use of bumblebees has expanded to
a range of other crops. Bees are an excellent pollinator of many fruit
crops, both indoors and outdoors. Also in the domain of seed selection
and seed production, bumblebees have proven to be useful.
What species of bee do we sell? Bombus impatiens
were chosen for the eastern parts of North America.
Why Bumble Bees? In comparison with other
pollinating insects like honeybees, bumble bees are very effective
pollinators. They are first of all fast workers (for instance, they
visit twice as many flowers per minute as honeybees), and because of
their size, they can carry relatively heavy loads, which enables them to
make long foraging trips. Also due to their relatively large size they
often achieve better contact with stamens and pistils than smaller
insects.
Furthermore, bumble bees make relatively few demands
on the circumstances under which they work. They feel more at ease in
greenhouses/tunnels than honeybees for instance, particularly where
restricted areas are concerned. Bumble bees are still active at
relatively low temperatures (around 10°C) and low light intensity
levels. Even strong wind and drizzle will not keep them from doing their
job.
One important advantage of bumble bees over honey bees
is the absence of a communication system. Honeybees inform each other by
means of the so-called bees' dance of the presence of an attractive food
source outside the crop in which their pollination activities are
required, as a result of which the bees may leave collectively. Bumble
bees do not have such a communication system. Should an individual
bumble bee find an attractive food source elsewhere, it cannot inform
its companions, so that the other bumble bees will continue to work in
the crop in which their services are required.
Another advantage of bumble bees over honeybees, which
manifests itself particularly in fruit crops, is the fact that they are
not so much tied to a specific area in the crop. They change trees more
often and more easily than honeybees. This benefits the
cross-pollination which is often required in fruit (especially when it
depends on pollen of special "pollinator trees").
Only Available East of the Mississippi.
