Get to know your top pollinator. By Anna Mouton. What is a honeybee? Bees are a group of about 20 000 species of winged insects that include honeybees, bumblebees, stingless bees, mason bees, carpenter bees, leafcutter bees, and sweat bees. Most…
A new Hortgro study starts buzzing in Western Cape pome- and stone-fruit orchards. By Nanike Esterhuizen. The South African fruit industry faces a challenge: a heavy reliance on honeybees for pollination. With much of the R17 billion deciduous-fruit industry dependent…
Success in spring depends on skilfully managing beehives during the rest of the year. By Anna Mouton. It’s easy to forget about bees outside the brief period when self-incompatible fruit trees are flowering. But the delivery of hives is preceded…
Cross-pollination by honeybees is a prerequisite for setting many pome- and stone-fruit cultivars. How can growers take control of this process? By Anna Mouton. There’s no recipe for perfect pollination — growers need to fine-tune their practices according to the…
The Western Cape has a superb indigenous pollinator — we must look after it. By Anna Mouton. If insects disappeared, humanity could probably survive on cereals and other non-pollinated crops, but we would lose about a third of global food…
How plum and pome-fruit growers can optimise pollinator performance in netted orchards. By Anna Mouton. “The pollination of plums is super-important,” says stone-fruit grower and technical adviser Petru du Plessis. “If you have correct pollination in September, you can look…
Everything growers need to know about the Western Cape Bee Industry Association standards for pollination beehives. By Anna Mouton. Effective pollination requires beehives to meet specific criteria. The Western Cape Bee Industry Association has developed a standard for pollination hives…