Honeybees In The Wild Nearly Gone In Nor...( ller yields and smaller lower quality ...)

ller yields and smaller, lower quality fruits and vegetables, Tew said. The lower the number of a plant's seeds "set" by pollination, the lower the quality of the fruit, he said. In fruit, apple, cherry, crab apple, plum and pear trees will be dramatically affected, he said. In vegetables, cucumbers, cantaloupes, watermelons, pumpkins, and squash will be hardest hit.

At the same time, consumers will notice the effects of the honeybee decimation in higher fruit and vegetable prices at supermarkets and farm stands.

Other insect pollinators, such as bumblebees and other wild bees, will step in for the absent feral honeybees and pick up a portion of their pollination duties, Tew said. However, he said, culturing bumblebees or wild bees in great numbers or importing foreign bees are not easy solutions to the honeybee shortage.

"A honeybee is a generalist. It does a good job pollinating apples or cucumbers," he said "Other types of bees are very specific to certain crops.

"Plus, if we take native wild bees and culture them, we're going to generate new problems there, too. If we bring together 10 to 20 times the number of bees that were ever together before, we could expect to have disease outbreaks and other challenges occur. We can't just whimsically switch to different bees and have that solve all the problems."

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Contact: James E. Tew
Tew.1@osu.edu
216-345-3684
Ohio State University
11-Jul-1996

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