What Roles Do Bees Play During Agricultural Production? | Tucson Bee Removal Services
Farmers are always pleased to hear the buzzing of the many bees that pollinate their crops. In case you are not familiar with the process of pollination, pollination could be described as a male bee spreading pollen grains with its anthers to the female part of a flower, which is called the stigma. From there, the pollen will grow a large round tube that reaches down into the flowers ovary where fertilization takes place. The United States Fish and Wildlife services estimates that seventy five percent of the world’s flowering plants depend on bees for fertilization in, and therefore, a continued existence. Out of this seventy percent one third are crops that grow various fruits, such as berries, apples, oranges, squash, tomatoes and almonds. So without bees, these tasty and naturally grown foods would disappear from this planet.
In order to ensure that bee’s will be fulfilling their pollinating duties, most farmers make use of domesticated honeybees. Making use of these trained bees becomes quite necessary for large-scale farms. However, bees are not the only insects that pollinate plants. For example flies, native bees, beetles, hummingbirds, and moths pollinate vegetable or crop plants as well as bees.
However, in order for farmers to continue capitalizing on these stray pollinators, farmers must provide some source of nearby food in order to prevent them from travelling to different regions in search of sustenance. As a rule, the more diverse your garden or crop is with different form of plant-life, then the more insects you will see flying around the plants.
As you can imagine, having a more diverse crop can also mean attracting bugs that are not good for the health of your plant-life. This is why farmers often rely on insects that eat insect-pests in order to save their crops from insect-induced damage. Such helpful insects include lace wigs, ladybug larvae, and parasitic wasps to name a few. Of course, farmers do not need to worry about the global bee population decline, just as long as farmers are fine with robotic bees working on their farms, but that is another story.
If bee populations do decline to the point that crops stop being pollinated, then why don’t scientists dispatch other pollinating insects to fill in for the missing bees?
