“Beekeepers in Texas and several other states send thousands of hives to pollinate crops around the country, moving them from state to state and crop to crop.”
What FOOD crops are dependent on bees? I thought most food crops are grown from seeds.
Do flowering-plant crops - fruit orchards - depend on bees, or do fruit trees make their fruit whether or not bees pollinate their flowers? I thought the only difference was whether or not the seed produced would be fertile or not.
A few fruit trees are considered 'self pollinating'. Others need pollen from other trees or flowers to make the best fruit. Some even have a male/female arrangement where fruit won't form unless the flowers of the female fruit bearing plant is pollinated by a male plant. Also, bees are not the only pollinating insects:
Wow, I've started this reply 6 times, and now can safely, honestly and without sarcasm ask: You live in town, don't you? Most flowering plants are polinated by bees, birds and wind. The bees are very important...but I don't hear anyone talking about the wild bees, just the commercial ones. I've seen plenty this spring, which means I'll have some apples, pears, and peaches.
As someone else (yeah homeschoolers!) has said, commercial bees improve the pollination rate greatly. What this means is that there will be less fruit, not that there will be no fruit.
I have a cherry tree and I have noticed that there are dramatic differences in the amount of fruit from year to year. If there is a heavy rain right at the time the flowers are open there are often hardly any cherries. If there is nice weather and the wind and some naturally occurring bees are able to do their thing, the branches are weighed down with cherries. It appears that the deciding factor is the opportunity for pollination to occur. If bees make this process more efficient and reliable then they will increase the yield of fruit.
“What FOOD crops are dependent on bees? I thought most food crops are grown from seeds.”
All food crops depend on bees or other insects that pollinate. Bumblebees also pollinate a great deal. Food crops are grown from seeds, but once the plant flowers, they must be pollinated in order for the fruit to form.
The answer is yes. many vegtables such as squash, qucumber,
require cross polination as well as fruit trees.