A Carpenter Bee working on a side slit. You can see a hole on the flower at front right, as well
Another good pollinator.
Carpenter Bees and Blueberries
While carpenters are excellent pollinators of open-faced fruit blooms, such as apple, crabapple, peach, pear Bradford pear, wild cherry, plum, kiwifruit, holly, brambles, and privit, they do have a bad habit. Since they have mouthparts capable of boring wood, they can easily cut a flower. And they sometimes do this, when flowers have a deep corrolla, such as blueberry and azalea blossoms. Blueberry growers have particular grudge against them because they can cut the flowers at the base to reach the nectar, and then do not accomplish pollination. Other bees will often use the same slits already opened by the carpenters.
I just spent an afternoon (March 26, 2000) observing them and other pollinators in a blueberry patch here in South Carolina. The most numerous bees were honeybees, because I have two bee yards within reach of this planting. Carpenter bees were also numerous. Other pollinators in scant numbers included one bumblebee queen, one wasp, a couple flies, and a half dozen butterflies. The bumblebee probably singly was the best pollinator of all, but we only observed one, and she was only present for a few minutes. I was disappointed that I was unable to catch her photo, as she was too nervous with me.
Sideworking carpenter bees were evident, as well as others that worked from the mouth of the flower. Honeybees were likewise evenly divided, some working the slits, and some working from the mouth of the flower. So pollination was being accomplished; the grower reports good crops every year that he doesn't have freeze problems.
The best pollination management is to keep a high population of a variety of pollinators. While one might be better than another, and not all will accomplish pollination in any particular case, the varietal mix will accomplish the job in the end.
A Carpenter Bee working on a side slit. You can see a hole on the flower at front right, as well |
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Another working from the side. You can see the slit, if you look closely. |
| A carpenter bee entering thru the corrolla, accomplishing pollination. Some slit flowers can be seen below her. | |
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Another good pollinator. |
Closeup
photo and the carpenter bee as pollinator of open-faced flowers
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