RE: pumpkins DIGEST V1 #
Hi Tad,
Sonund like you're gonna have a fun summer with the scouts. I have a
friend who keeps bees on the Isle of Wight. I forwarded your message to
him and this was his reply...
*Hi Toby,
*I have read your friends plea for help & it is a tricky question. I
have
*fruit trees in the garden & do you think my bees will hang around our
house
*to give me good pollination? NO!!!!!!!!!!!! The little devils prefer to
*visit the fields about 1 mile away where they tend to grow oilseed
rape.
*They love the stuff.
*I don't know if you get hover flies over there. They are pretty good
*pollinators. They would be attracted to most types of flowering herbs &
if
*they had nice bright pumpkin flowers to attract them, would probably do
*some good work. Trouble is, finding the herbs that will flower at the
same
*time as the pumpkins. I have seen my bees working pumpkins for the
pollen
*but not for nectar. Bumble bees (the big black & yellow round bees) are
a
*good pollinator but not so good as hoverflies.
Tad, I hope this is helpful to you. It might be a good idea to have a
Pollination Day for the scouts... Or find out what attracts hoverflies
and bumblebees...
You could also try this question out on bigpumpkins.com. There're a few
more biggie experts on that site, and several who grow commercially,
facing the same problem you have posed.
Toby
mr-sprout@sbcglobal.net
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pumpkins@hort.net [o*@hort.net] On Behalf
Of Mike and Vickie Brock
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 7:32 AM
To: pumpkins@hort.net
Subject: Re: pumpkins DIGEST V1 #
Tad,
Bees help pollinate. You may have had pollination problems from heat or
to
much moisture on the flowers
MB
on 5/25/04 9:26 AM, Tad Miller at tmiller@gschq.com wrote:
> We are a Cub Scout Pack planting a Pumpkin patch as a Fall fundraiser.
Last
> year we had a problem with polination, with the scale of the patch (
> 200
> plants) I do not want to polinate by hand.
>
> What is the best flowers to attract the correct type of Bees to
polinate
> pumpkin plants.
> My neighbor is a Bee Keeper, but all he knows are the hunny bees. He
did
> tell me that the Pumpkin flowers do not produce nector, so the hunny
bees are
> not the best.
>
> Can anyone shed some light on this.
>
> As for the Sunflowers, we did not have bird problems, but Ants.
>
> Thanks
> tad
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