BUMBLEBEES POLLINATORS IN AGROPRODUCTION

  For most people, the word "pollination" is usually associated with domestic honey bees. They are by far the best nectar collectors and honey producers, but few people know that the honey bee is one of the most low effective pollinators. The best pollinators are wild small bees and bumblebees. And if technologies are just beginning to develop with the breeding and introduction of wild bees into the crop, then bumblebees have been used as pollinators for more than 30 years.

Biological characteristics that determine the success of bumblebee pollination.

  There are many such features, but before listing them, one should focus on the "motivation" of bumblebees. Both bumblebees and bees collect either nectar and pollen. However, their priorities are different. The main purpose of the bee's work is to collect nectar; the main object of the bumblebee's collection is pollen. Therefore, the interaction between plants and bumblebees with respect to pollination is more substantial.

  During flight, the bumblebee creates an electrostatic charging around its body and upon contact with the stamen, the pollen is electrostatically attracted to the hairs of the insect. As it travels from flower to flower, some of the pollen falls off the bumblebee on the stigma of the pistil. This usually occurs through direct contact, but statically charged pollen grains are capable of flying short distances to the stigma of the pistil even without direct contact.

Other major benefits of using bumblebees include:

1. Bumblebees start working at temperatures from + 50˚C, and honey bees from + 15˚C and above. Like all arthropods, bumblebees are cold-blooded organisms, however, to a certain extent they are able to maintain body temperature due to muscle contractions and therefore are less dependent on the ambient temperature.
2. Bumblebees actively pollinate plants even in 70% cloud cover, while honey bees are guided primarily by the position of the sun, so they are less active in cloudy weather.
3. Bumblebees are able to work at wind speeds of up to 70 km / h, while bees stop working if this figure exceeds 30 km / h.
4. Bumblebees extract pollen by buzzing in the truest sense of the word. This process is called vibrational pollination or insonification. The bumblebee captures a flower and vibrates its body intensely using powerful flight muscles, but not wings. This results in the release of large amounts of pollen and significantly increases the yield and quality of a number of crops, such as tomato and blueberry. Honey bees do not have this ability.
5. The bumblebee has a larger size and tomentose body, so the efficiency of pollen transfer is much higher by bumblebees than by bees.
6. The bumblebee pollinates more flowers per unit time than the honey bee.
7. Bumblebees work throughout the daylight hours, as they begin to emerge at sunrise, and complete pollination at sunset.
8. Both bumblebees and bees are sensitive to the lack of ultraviolet radiation, but in bumblebees this sensitivity is much lower, which makes it possible to use them in rooms with various cover materials, for example, in plastic greenhouses.
9. Bumblebees are not subject to the "crowd effect", since they do not have a means of communication like the "dancing" of bees. Consequently, one individual cannot communicate to another about the presence of more attractive plants outside the pollinated crop. Therefore, the bumblebee works closer to the hive, which has a positive effect on the effectiveness of pollination.
10. Bumblebees do not suffer from dangerous infectious diseases that bees are susceptible to, for example, varroosis.
11. The production, delivery and operation of bumblebees is organized all year round. The concept of wintering for industrial bumblebee families does not exist.
12. A very important quality of bumblebees is peacefulness. The lack of aggressiveness fits very well with the work of the staff on the cultivated crop and does not cause the problems that bee pollination can lead to.

Application rates

  A typical bumblebee colony consists of 60-80 workers and a queen. The duration of its work is from 4 to 8 weeks, depending on the type of colony.

  The rate of settlement of the area depends on the crop and can vary from 20 to 2 hives per 1 hectare. If we take as an example such a classic crop as tomato, then 4-10 hives per ha are required for pollination of this crop. While 2-3 hives per ha will be enough for pollination of pepper.

Precautions

  Modern agricultural production is still impossible to imagine without chemical plant protection products, but they are the ones that pose the greatest threat to the biodiversity of fauna and human health. Unfortunately, bumblebees, like all other bee species, are very sensitive to pesticides. Therefore, the use of pesticides and the work of bumblebees are incompatible. In the case of using chemical means of protection, bumblebee hives are closed (usually for no more than 2 days) or transferred to another place for the required period.

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  As Albert Szent-Györgyi, the Nobel Prize Laureate said, "To understand a living system, you need to love it." Agricultural production is, first of all, working with living organisms and environmental conditions, therefore living organisms must become their own in the process of working with them. Then the specialist begins not only to understand, but also to feel them. This is what allows him not only to analyze what is happening, but also to be able to predict, predict the future situation and form an acceptable model of the ecosystem.