[Pollinator] Fact Checking?

[Peter Bernhardt]

Dear Gabriele:

Thank you for your communication.  Here we have an important case in
point.  Cranberry and blueberry release their pollen in groups of four
(tetrads) not as single grains.  More important, the pollen is stored in
tubular anthers with terminal pores.  True pollinators should sonicate
these flowers, right?  However, the literature I've read insists that
honeybees do not sonicate.  First, how do honeybees get pollen out of the
anthers and then contact the receptive stigma in the flower while wearing
enough pollen tetrads?  Then we must ask a second question .  The honeybees
in the Pettis study carried little blueberry pollen but is that a bad
thing?  How many tetrad grains are actually required for fruit set in a
blue berry as each tetrad must make 4 pollen tubes to fertilize four
ovules?

Here's a link to a paper written by our own Jim Cane.  He and his
colleagues tackled pollination in another Vaccinium species.  Jim used to
be famous, you know.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2443575?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Peter

On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 1:23 PM, Gabriele Ludwig <gludwig at almondboard.com>
wrote:

> Hi Peter,
>
> Cranberry and blueberry growers are paying bee keepers for honey bee
> pollination services so Jerry is correct in that aspect. See also the
> National Geographic info graphics.
>
> What gave me pause was data on pollen collected from bees used for
> pollination services in the paper by Pettis et al. "Crop pollination
> exposes honey bees to pesticides which alters susceptibility to the gut
> pathogen Nosema ceranae" by Pettis J S et al. In PLOS One. July 24, 2013.
> The most interesting data to me in the paper was the amount of pollen found
> on bees coming back to hives. Very little cranberry pollen was found making
> me wonder what the growers are paying for...
>
> Gabriele Ludwig
> Almond Board of California.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Nov 9, 2015, at 09:56, Peter Bernhardt <bernhap2 at slu.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Within the last week there two statements appeared regarding the the
> pollination of crops.  The comments of members working on bee-pollination
> of crops would be appreciated.
> >
> > 1) November 5, Saint Louis U.  A bee conservation lecture series was
> held.  One of the speakers was Gerald Hayes from Monsanto on the role of
> honeybees and our food supply.  Hayes insisted that our North American,
> cultivated, cranberries were pollinated by honeybees.  Is this correct?  I
> remember a seminar by Jim Cane emphasizing the importance of native
> megachilids for cranberry pollination.  The speaker also insisted that
> blueberries were pollinated primarily by honeybees in North America.
> >
> > 2) CJ Bradshaw and Paul Ehrlich released a coauthored by book from
> University of Chicago Press (my publisher) last month.  On page 58 the
> authors insist that Trigona (species not identified) pollinates 90 species
> of crop plants including coffee.  I know that most coffee marketed today is
> self-pollinating although it still yields sufficient nectar for introduced
> honeybees to make honey but what of the other 89 other crop species?  I am
> aware that Trigona pollinate avocados, macadamias and a few other fruit/nut
> trees but, generally speaking, their bodies are too small to contact both
> anthers and stigmas as they forage.
> >
> > Peter
> > _______________________________________________
> > Pollinator mailing list
> > Pollinator at lists.sonic.net
> > https://lists.sonic.net/mailman/listinfo/pollinator
>
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