When it comes to berry pollination throughout the West, honeybees are the biggest show in town. That can be a problem for pollination diversity and for farmers because honeybees aren’t always the best option for some crops.
“That’s especially true with blueberries,” said Miranda Jones, a graduate student in biology at Utah State University. “Blueberries bloom early, when skies are often overcast and rainy, which are conditions that honeybees don’t like.”
Honeybees also aren’t crazy about living inside high tunnels, the hoop-house enclosures many strawberry farmers employ.
“Honeybees will fly away from high tunnels if given half a chance,” Jones said. “We wondered, what would happen if we added mason bees to the tunnels?”
Mason bees are native species that get their name from the mud or leaves they gather to make their nests. Unlike honeybees, that live in hives, mason bees are solitary pollinators that build nests in narrow, tube-like hollow stems or burrowed holes in wood. Mason bees hibernate in the winter and emerge in the spring and early summer.
“They come out ready to fly and they don’t mind the cool, damp weather,” Jones said.
With help from local farmers and a Western SARE grant, Jones and her advisor, Dr. Kelsey Graham, are introducing four species of mason bees to 16 berry fields in Oregon and Utah. The two-year project is already under way.
The team designed and built hexagon-shaped nesting boxes filled with straw and drilled holes to mimic the structure mason bees like. Jones has tested the boxes in several fields already and is pleasantly surprised by early results.
“The mason bees have adapted well as pollinators in high tunnels, a place the honeybees don’t like,” Jones said. “In fact, they’ve been efficient in all our trials so far. Tests show that, based on pollen content, the mason bees are collecting pollen from the berries themselves not the nearby morning glories and other flowers you find blooming in fields and high tunnels.”
It appears, too, that the honeybees and mason bees work well together. Jones has been placing mason bee boxes beside the honeybee boxes and the bees seem curious and accepting of their new neighbors.
“Previous science suggests they actually work better together than alone because they inspire each other to go deep into the fields to find pollen,” she noted.
Jones hopes to identify which bee-crop pairing show the most potential and evaluate material and labor costs associated with mason-bee management.
“Our goal is to support natural pollinator diversity and also use bee management to strengthen the sustainability of our food system,” she said. “We hope to improve the lives of berry farmers throughout the region.”