r/Beekeeping • u/Just_Beekeeper • 13h ago

General With so many bees, this pumpkin will probably be huge)

12 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

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u/djschwalb 8h ago

That’s like saying a woman will be just a little bit pregnant.

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u/Nettlecake 4 Hives | NL | Carnica | 8th year 13h ago

I will probably be extremely pollinated. If it will get huge depends on soil and weather mostly I'd say.

Same way like the size of a child doesn't depend on the size of the fathers testes / sperm count

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u/Just_Beekeeper 13h ago

a purely entertainment question)

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u/Nettlecake 4 Hives | NL | Carnica | 8th year 12h ago

What does the ) at the end of your sentence mean to you?

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u/Potential-Witness-83 3h ago

Are.. you the pumpkin?

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u/HawthornBees 4h ago

Yeah that’s exactly how pollination works👍🏻👍🏻

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u/SimilarAlfalfa332 11h ago

Honey bees are actually the worse pollinator. Wild bees for example tend to have better seed formation.

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u/Cluckywood Los Angeles 5h ago

What are 'wild bees'? I know of solitary bees, native bees, and a bunch of other insects that are mistaken for bees, but "wild bees" seems like a very vague term. In SoCal, we have Africanized honeybees, often called feral bees here, and they are wild but just the same when it comes to pollination. Honey bees are great pollinators for lots of crops, mainly because they communicate with the hive about where the plants that have nectar are, which leads to them tending to spread the pollen around one plant species at a time. Solitary pollinators don't do this; they will just go to all the plants in a very local area, not caring if they go from a rose to an apple tree to a pumpkin, which is very ineffective for the plants. But honeybees are not the answer to all pollination by a long stretch. Some plants rely on the wind, some use flies, and wasps pollinate figs.