[Pollinator] Preprint-Pollination CHINESE CROPS

[Peter Bernhardt]

Attached, please find a "preprint" (galley proof in full color) of a big
paper that will be published in The American Journal of Botany in their
special October 2014 issue, "Speaking About Food."  Readers may be most
interested in the roles of honeybees vs. other insects vs. hand-pollination
of crops grown extensively in Yunnan Province (one of China's biggest
hotspots for domesticated plant diversity).  This may change your view on
several matters.

1)  Bees are alive and well in China.  There's no need to hand-pollinate
EVERYTHING.

2) A number of crops are both edible and medicinal.  The Chinese don't
discriminate between them traditionally and a number are insect-pollinated
(check out the wasp-pollinated ginseng-substitute in the bell flower
family).

3)  Some edible/medicinal species are only semi-domesticated but the
traditional honeybee in garden hives is ALSO semi-domesticated.

4)  The custom of going out, collecting a hive of A. cerana and installing
it in a traditional dung-sealed hive has fallen out of fashion.  Apis
mellifera (introduced in the 19th century) rules at the industrial
agriculture level and may also be supplanting A. cerana among rural
apiculturists.  Note the interviews with Yunnan apiculturists from one
region populated primarily by members of the Bo ethnic group.

Peter
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