Pollination management

There are other insects commercially available that are more efficient, like the blue orchard bee for fruit and nut trees, local bumblebees better specialized for some other crops, hand pollination that is essential for production of hybrid seeds and some greenhouse situations, and even pollination machines.

Factors that cause the loss of pollinators include pesticide misuse, unprofitability of beekeeping for honey, rapid transfer of pests and diseases to new areas of the globe, urban/suburban development, changing crop patterns, clearcut logging (particularly when mixed forests are replaced by monoculture pine), clearing of hedgerows and other wild areas, bad diet because of loss of floral biodiversity,[1] and a loss of nectar corridors for migratory pollinators.

In many such cases, various native bees are vastly more efficient at pollination (e.g., with blueberries[4]), but the inefficiency of the honey bees is compensated for by using large numbers of hives, the total number of foragers thereby far exceeding the local abundance of native pollinators.

In the case of the kiwifruit, its flowers do not even produce nectar, so that honeybees are reluctant to even visit them, unless present in such overwhelming numbers that they do so incidentally.

In the 1950s when the woods were full of wild bee trees, and beehives were normally kept on most South Carolina farms, a farmer who grew ten acres (4 ha) of watermelons would be a large grower and probably had all the pollination needed.

But today's grower may grow 200 acres (80 ha), and, if lucky, there might be one bee tree left within range.

Today, with melons planted in large tracts, the grower may no longer have hives on the farm; he may have poisoned many of the pollinators by spraying blooming cotton; he may have logged off the woods, removing hollow trees that provided homes for bees, and pushed out the hedgerows that were home for solitary native bees and other pollinating insects.

Before pollination needs were understood, orchardists often planted entire blocks of apples of a single variety.

To make matters worse, in the past five years we have seen a decline in winter managed beehives, which has reached an unprecedented rate near 30%.