.
15% is often mentioned like PH says..
The figures are all out there to check. Syngenta themselves (who incidentally have a department , albeit a very small one, dedicated to honeybee and other pollinator welfare,) seem to be working on about 8%. (Its more down to better seed set in each pod and a shorter flowering period equalling more even pod ripeness and thus better harvest recovery than increased seed yied per se) Even 8% is significant.
Warning though to all you smallbeekeepers out there who want to be both territorial (have exclusivity) AND play the pollination card. Rape NEEDS a minimum of 1 hive per hectare and preferrably 2 hives per hectare to achieve the crop uplift.
If you do the 'pollination' thing you cannot bag a farm with 50 hectares, stick 6 hives on it, and grumble when the farmer gets other bees in too. Your bees are totally inadequate for the farmers needs, so you have to be prepared to share with other/others. As has happened in numerous places in these circumstances if you grumble too much you can be out on your ear and a beekeeper with adequate hives, or a number of them with nearer collectively to the total, can be in in your place. Farmers/growers/landowners are highly averse to beekeepers giving them grief.
Finman mentioned forage distance, and this also means, quite correctly, that, to ensure relatively even pollination on large blocks, you have to do multiple drops, not a single huge site.
We NEVER pay rent for doing OSR, and the concept of the farmer paying the beekeeper is currently gaining some momentum. Ditto above though, you cannot charge the farmer if your desire for exclusivity/isolation means he will not get the pollination he desires and he suffers crop loss.
In your favour though is the fact that there are nowhere near enough bees available from people prepared to migrate to cover all the OSR fields, and a lot of farmers would rather have the aforesaid 6 hives than none at all.
On the spraying issue, NONE of the current recommended sprays do any serious harm to bee colonies. The idea of chasing the farmer to buttonhole him goes back to the days of Hostathion and similar which were used, but have been gone for many years. Most farmers and contractors, even though the chemicals are relatively benign, will spray outwith the heat of the day, and even if they do, we have not seen any serious spray damage on OSR for many years. Bees right in the fields, spray drift right over the top, no issues. Spray death cases (not severe) at that time can be due to the smell the bees come back with during fungicide application, leading to non acceptance at the hive, and expulsion and death outside. The bees that DO get killed by insecticide these days do not make it home and thus spray kills from that cause, unless severe, are largely invisible. Another highly visible cause of death at rape time is actually herbicide application to areas, especially those with dandelions, nearby. Glyphosate (Roundup etc)seems harmless enough, but anything of the paraquat family is bee lethal, and slow enough for them to bring it back to the hive caising poisoning of hive bees too. Have seen very severe bee kill from that cause in dry weather when the bees actually went out and gathered the 'water' they found.
That’s how I know its rape growing there, he told me after helping to pick me up.
