Nice little earners for swarm collectors

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Seen it all now - nuc of bumbles anyone?

http://www.****************/auction.asp?id=4410&name=Bumblebees
on that well known auction site where you can bid for 4 bees!

 

[VEG]

lol you got to love a trier

 

[DarynWebb]

wonder who'd buy them?

 

[dpearce4]

mcdonalds customers

 

[johnfly]

somebody with poly tunnels

 

[Beeforest]

You may joke but a director at Brogdale, home of the national fruit collection, told our smallholding group that they no longer buy in honey bee pollination services and instead buy in boxes of bumble bees from Holland to do this job.

 

[fox403]

Well bumblebee do start and finish after honeybees I think in future they will be modified to live in hives,,,imagine a swarm of bumblebees

Sent from my MB525 using Tapatalk 2

 

[oliver90owner]

Bumble bees fly lower and can exit polytunnels, honey bees fly higher and towards the light, so get stuck in the hot apex area. A bumble bee colony is more like 'polytunnel size'; a polytunnel alone would not be adequate for a honeybee colony. Bumbles are more adapted to various crops (proboscis length, strength of insect to open flowers, etc).

A colony of bumbles would not go far on a crop similar to OSR (a similar one, but insect pollinated entirely, say).

A case of 'horses for courses' and needs to be considered in context of the relatively small areas concerned.

 

[nonstandard]

You may joke but a director at Brogdale, home of the national fruit collection, told our smallholding group that they no longer buy in honey bee pollination services and instead buy in boxes of bumble bees from Holland to do this job.

I think you will find that the imported bumbles are supposed to be killed off after pollination is over; this is so that large numbers of non native bumbles being released do not disadvantage the more diverse local bumble population.

 

[oliver90owner]

Nice little earners for

I had a quick look on that site. A good earmner would be the refractometer at £43.50 - whe the same item is available for about fifteen quid delivered! I paid a tenner less than that well more than five years ago, and it was sent from the US Th*rne were charging about £75 pounds at the time.

On the topic of bumbles, I thought 'cuckoo' bumbles did not have a nest of their own, but were like the cuckoo (bird) and used nests of other bumble species?

 

[newportbuzz]

wonder what else is in the box being imported into the uk and even ireland.

the nests arnt being killed i can tell you that and they bees are going feral and what sort of bugs and beasties are hitchin a ride i dread to think.
a lot of the IPM is based on the colonies being killed at the end of use which is suposed to limit the imported bees having acess to our local bumbles.

another VARROA???????

how many diseases of bumbles could feasably cross the gap to honey bees??

 

[johnfly]

native bumbles are used to breed bumbles somewhere in Europe they are for use in poly tunnels, the nests are made up of 100-180 bumbles in a nest and exported to the UK, they die out after about 10 to 12 weeks

 

[protheroe]

large ammounts of bumble bees are used for tomato pollination in vast greenhouses but they need to be fed for lack of nectar on tomatoes

 

[BeeJayBee]

large ammounts of bumble bees are used for tomato pollination in vast greenhouses but they need to be fed for lack of nectar on tomatoes

Same round here too. They buy in bumble bees to pollinate glasshouse strawberries.