When natural forage and nectar are present prior to almond bloom when the bees are delivered, this naturally jumpstarts something we call a positive feedback loop within the colony. Scouts are sent out to survey the landscape and ultimately to report back to the colony with their findings. If there is an abundance of resources, the scout does a dance to other bees, indicating the available forage and its location. From there, if there is an abundance, the queen starts laying feverishly.
As pollen and nectar increase, and foraging bees take flight to harvest the resources, this triggers even more of the colony to get out and pollinate and shows the queen that she can keep laying at a fast, healthy pace. On and on it goes, like compounding interest on a good investment!
Fan-Jet Microsprinklers ®
Add a line of Fan-Jets ® Precision Rain - Rain when you want it, where you want it. Frost Protection - Fan-Jets can help provide frost protection by raising the ambient temperature by 2-3 degrees. Fan-Jets will allow you to push salts away from the root zone. Fan-Jets will help your pre-emergents penetrate the soil.
The positive feedback loop representing optimal conditions for bees in almonds.
How do we provide natural forage ? Cover crops, both annual in-row cover, and, on the perimeter of the field, with hedgerows or perennial cover crop designed to bloom at critical times. In addition to food, bees also forage for water. BDG’s Water for Bees is a simply brilliant program that growers have enthusiastically adopted to ensure ready sources of fresh water. Like us, bees can survive, theoretically, quite some time without the proper diet. However, without clean drinking water on a daily basis, we shut down. So do bees. The closer that water and food is to our blooming orchard, the less they have to travel for that resource, the more time they spend pollinating. It’s really that simple.
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