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Do you want bigger and faster growing blueberries? New research shows that wild bees are a key secret ingredient in larger, better yields of blueberries – producing fleshy berries and maturing faster
The study, led by scientists at the University of Vermont, is the first to successfully reveal that wild bees are improving not only blueberry quantities, but also size and other quality factors. She notes that wild bees bring major benefits to berry growers, including: a larger berry size (12%), a quantity (12%), a size consistency (11%) and earlier harvests – two and a half days.
"Other studies have explored the effects of bees on blueberry yields, but it's the first to show that pollinators can also improve crop quality," says Charles Nicholson, who has directed the 39; study as a PhD student at the Gund Institute for the Environment School of Environment and Natural Resources Rubenstein. The study is published in Agriculture, ecosystems and the environment.
The researchers calculated that wild bees could increase production by up to 36%, or about $ 136,000 a year, on a single, medium-sized farm, on the nine berry farms studied in the state of New Brunswick. Vermont. In other farms, the researchers determined that the potential benefits of wild bees for production were about 6% on average.
"This study highlights the underestimated work of wild bees," said Nicholson, noting that two-thirds of the world's most important crops benefit from pollination of bees, including coffee, cocoa (for chocolate) and many fruits and vegetables. "Without them, farmers need to find pollination elsewhere, paying high rental fees to import bees, for example."
The results provide a farm-scale perspective against recent global estimates of the economic benefits of wild bees in billions annually – roughly the same as for honey bees, with associated lower costs.
Unique research location
Because bees visit Vermont blueberries much less often than in other blueberry growing regions, Green Mountain State is the perfect place to isolate the value of wild bees for berry growers, researchers said. .
"Most pollination research is taking place in flooded areas of honeybees," said Taylor Ricketts, co-author, director of the Gund Institute for Environment's UVM. "It makes it difficult to really see the work that wild bees can do for farmers."
The team carefully pollinated the blueberries at the nine research sites – using electric toothbrushes to mimic the animated pollination of the bumblebees and then painting the collected pollen on 5,000 blueberry blossoms for help small brushes. They compared the production of these flowers, which received almost perfect pollination, with naturally pollinated branches. The difference between the two conditions revealed the "pollination deficit" of each farm, which allowed to improve production by increasing the number of wild pollinators.
"Many farmers do not realize that they can be limited by an insufficient number of pollinators, just as they can be by water or nutrients," Nicholson said.
This study highlights the importance of wild bees for world agriculture. Still, the first study by Ricketts and his colleagues mapping wild bees across the United States suggests that wild bee abundance declined by 23% between 2008 and 2013, especially in key US agricultural sectors. . areas. Another Ricketts study recently revealed that climate change could reduce by 88% the areas available for coffee production in Latin America, as well as the number of bees available to pollinate coffee.
Another reason to protect wild pollinators – at least for berry lovers – is that wild bees, especially bumble bees, are better at pollinating blueberries than bees. Bumblebees have developed the ability to "buzz pollination" by vibrating blueberry flowers at a specific frequency to effectively release pollen showers. Honey bees are unable to do this and must use less efficient techniques to extract pollen from the flower.
What can farmers and policy makers do to protect wild bees? The UVM team found that maintaining a high proportion of natural habitat for bees around farms can help, while spraying fewer pesticides. Smaller actions by the owners can also help, such as less mowing, the planting of native wildflowers and the establishment of "bee boxes", which are like nest boxes, but intended for wild native bees.
"This study shows, once again, that the protection of wild bee populations offers significant benefits to our agricultural economy," Ricketts adds. "Maintaining healthy ecosystems can be as important as providing fertilizers or water."
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