Video of a Bumble Bee getting busy in the Boar Patch

[feraltomatoes]

I love watching bumble bees do there thing, seems like there's alot of them this year.
http://www.youtube.com/user/feraltomatoes

[travis]

Very interesting. Great quality of sound too. You can hear the bee do the high frequency wing thing for just a second each time he positions himself on the blossom.

Now we see how all those beautiful multi-colored tomatoes came out of your gardens in such a short period of time.

[amideutch]

The way Brad turns out his creations he must have a lot of those bees flying around. Nice to see you back posting again brad and am growing yet another on of your creations this year "Porkchop". I'm going to try to catch Tom Wagner at one of his stops here in Europe this summer. Ami

[Robert Brenchley]

It's obviously getting pollen - notice the lumps of it on the back legs? Toms aren't a normal bee plant though, so I do wonder how well nourished the colony will be. Monoculture isn't good for bees!

[carolyn137]

Yes, the bees are after the pollen b'c tomato blossoms don't have nectar.

Brad, remember when a few years ago I suggested that you were getting some of your interesting varieties b'c your tomato fields were atop an abandoned nuclear dump site?

Well, I'm now willing to accept the fact that most of the varieties you get are bee driven but how about some mutations from that nuclear dump?

[travis]

Originally Posted by Robert Brenchley

Toms aren't a normal bee plant though, so I do wonder how well nourished the colony will be. Monoculture isn't good for bees!

Maybe true. Bumble bees visit my tomatoes infrequently. But they do visit them every year heavily around the same time it seems. Our yard is full of other choices of pollen at the same time. So, it's the bumble bee's choice whether to visit the tomatoes or another pollen bearing plant.

Just seems they single out the tomatoes for a couple of days and then move on to other flowers. Beats me as to their logic.

Brad's bee seems to have visited something with a bit of caffiene because the bumble bees I see on my tomatoes don't move quite that quickly from bloom to bloom. Rather they work them just a bit longer and do a little 360 move around the anther cone while holding it with their mandibles. This leaves a crescent shaped scar on the anther cone which turns brown and clearly lets you know that a bee has visited that particular flower.

I try to save my seeds from early sets of tomatoes and from those at the end of the season because I notice the bumble bees usually come after a midsummer heatwave stopped fruit sets and when the weather cools off just a bit like into the high 80s and the newer blooms again begin to have viable pollen. Maybe that time coincides with their need for protein to feed their young ones.

[Raymondo]

Nice to watch them at work. Australia's equivalent, the Blue-banded Bee, is a little smaller but behaves in exactly the same way. I love it when they turn up. If you're in the tommy patch you can hear the short buzz as they vibrate pollen out of the flower, just like the Bumblebee.

[Robert Brenchley]

Bumblebees are generalised foragers, they'll visit any plant that's going. If they're in the vicinity and there's pollen on the toms, they'll go for it. Honeybees are very selective, and are programmed to be extremely efficient at finding the most profitable sources of nectar and pollen, and concentrating on those. Do you ever see honeybees on toms?

They use bumbles in greenhouses because they have small colonies, and can cope a lot better with the enclosed environment in a greenhouse. Honeybees will manage after a fashion, but colonies dwindle to such an extent that it wouldn't pay any beekeeper to take a greenhouse contract. Also, bumbles do the buzz pollination which is needed for toms much more efficiently than honeybees.

[Tania]

Originally Posted by travis

Maybe true. Bumble bees visit my tomatoes infrequently. But they do visit them every year heavily around the same time it seems. Our yard is full of other choices of pollen at the same time. So, it's the bumble bee's choice whether to visit the tomatoes or another pollen bearing plant.

Just seems they single out the tomatoes for a couple of days and then move on to other flowers. Beats me as to their logic.

I try to save my seeds from early sets of tomatoes and from those at the end of the season because I notice the bumble bees usually come after a midsummer heatwave stopped fruit sets and when the weather cools off just a bit like into the high 80s and the newer blooms again begin to have viable pollen. Maybe that time coincides with their need for protein to feed their young ones.

I agree with Travis, as I have the same observations. This year is somewhat unusual, as I also had more bumble bees visiting my tomato field in early to mid June. Now they lost all interest in tomato pollen, and switched to clover, mustard, and squash.

I will be collecting seeds from the tomatoes that set later in the season (July), as, naturally, I do not want any crosses to offer, and I am guessing that with the bumble bees activity in the early summer I may have increased probability of crossing in the early fruit.

I have never seen a honeybee anywhere close to my tomato plants.

Great video Brad!

Tania

[Bdobs]

I've been seeing lots of Bumble Bees this year here in Martinez also.

BTW...Just ate my first Large Barred Boar and it was wonderful!!! By far the best tasting variety so far this year.
PBTD, Beauty King and PorkChop should be coming soon.