hoophouse question

[Alpinejs]

I am raising about 30 varieties in hoophouses for seed. Since there is no
breeze in there and no bees, is there a need to bag even though the
plants are in close proximity to eachother. I shake the flower trusses twice
daily, so don't use fans or such. I have lots of tomatoes on Kosovo and box
car willy but they were not bagged. A huge one on Kosovo is blushing and I
will eat it even though I need the seed!!

[Medbury Gardens]

i wouldn't imagine so if there's no bee's about.
I find in my hoop/tunnelhouse this time of year been late spring the door needs to be open and bumble bees go in but they seems to go straight to the cucumber,buzz around them flowers and out again,they don't seem to show any interest in tomatoes.

[Alpinejs]

I have never seen a bee inside my hoophouse even though the doors are
often required to be open. Maybe, it is because of all the citrus trees that I
have who's blossums are always swarming with bees. There is nothing on the
hoophouse end of the yard to attract bees. Being as to how I sell seedlings,
I would hate to tell someone they are getting a Cherokee Green, for instance,
if there is a chance it is a cross of some sort.

[Medbury Gardens]

yes honey bee's don't seem to like going in mine either,maybe too hot for them inside maybe??never get native bees either

[Alpinejs]

Do your bees fly upside down in NZ???

[Medbury Gardens]

Originally Posted by Alpinejs

Do your bees fly upside down in NZ???

only the very clever ones

[Worth1]

Bees dont even bother with my tomato plants, they go after the cucumbers squash and such.

Maybe our bees fly upside down and not the other way around.

Worth

[dice]

I found out from a lecture on an educational television channel that
bees come in "long proboscis" and "short proboscis" varieties (bumblebees do, anyway).

The subject was research in Chile, where they have one native bumblebee
species (contrast that with up here, where there are 18 different
bumblebee species known in Eastern Washington alone) with a long
proboscis, and two introduced bumblebee species from the UK that
both have a short proboscis (snout). The two introduced species were
imported to pollenate some greenhouse crop and commercial clover
fields, respectively.

The problems come when the bees try to collect pollen and nectar from
native fuschia plants, among other things. The fuschias have long flowers,
and the short proboscis bumblebees cannot reach the nectar when
opening up the end of the flower the way that bees usually do. So instead
they bite a hole in it high up on the flower and get the nectar that way,
without ever pollenating the flower. The native bumblebee, on the other
hand, can reach all of the way up in there with its proboscis, so it just
opens up the flower from the end and pollenates it in the process. But
when one finds a flower where one of the introduced bumblebee species
has bitten a hole in it high up on the flower, the native bumblebee takes
the shortcut, too, so the flower does not get pollenated.

This may be a minor annoyance with fuschias, which are probably well
distributed in fields that are not under cultivation and flower freely in
their native environment, but what happens when the same thing
happens to flowering trees that have long flowers? Over a hundred years
or so, this could have a much larger impact on that native environment.

Feral Bumblebees, this year's South American eco-menace, and
in the ironic context of a bee shortage in N. America that has been
on-going for some years as well. (Maybe it was our bad karma.)

[Alpinejs]

LOL, the things that my daddy never taught me!!!! I have to come to
Tomatoville to learn about the birds and the bees.

[Medbury Gardens]

Yes but only the bees,just wait till we get onto the birds

Originally Posted by Alpinejs

LOL, the things that my daddy never taught me!!!! I have to come to
Tomatoville to learn about the birds and the bees.

[Fusion_power]

There are honeybees that have tongues up to 7.2 mm long, yet the average honeybee has only 5.4 mm, a difference of 30%. This is totally irrelevant so long as the flower has a short corolla such as dutch clover. But when it comes to red clover which has a very long corolla, the short tongue bees get short shrift.

Honeybees do not bite into flowers, but if there is a hole bitten by other bees, they will readily feed from that nectar source. They also do not bite fruit like grapes or apples, but if yellow jackets tear holes in the fruit, then honeybees will collect the juice.

Last but not least, honeybees do not "buzz" flowers to collect pollen. A mason bee will put its thorax against the pistil of the flower and vibrate wing muscles producing a very strong vibration which knocks pollen out of the flower. This is the source of most of the crossed tomato seed that we see from time to time.

DarJones

[Skaggydog]

sorry about that

[dice]

The bumblebees I referred to are relatives of this kind of bee:
http://www.organicgardeninfo.com/images/bumble-bee.jpg

(They are doubtless familiar to most gardeners and children
in N. America.)

[ddsack]

OK, now I'm going to have to go out and measure my bumblebees tongues next summer!

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by dice

The bumblebees I referred to are relatives of this kind of bee:
http://www.organicgardeninfo.com/images/bumble-bee.jpg

(They are doubtless familiar to most gardeners and children
in N. America.)

We had a big nest of them in the barn when I was about 15.

My dad went to the barn to kill them with gasoline and told my mom to stay away.
She didn't and made me come with her.
About a thousand of them swarmed out of the barn passed up my dad and headed for my mom and I

I took off running while she was calling for help, no way was I going into that swarm to save her and get stung.

You might say it was one of those everybody out for their selves moments.

She looked pretty bad after the battle was over and her eyes stayed swollen shut for a week.
I can still see those bumble bees swarming around her like little black dots from 50 yards away.

Worth