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The Wisconsin Bumblebee | Sat, Feb 11, 2012 | ||
There seems to be two path investigators have taken to improve the quantities and stability of bumblebees needed for commercial pollination purposes. As far back as 1912, Sladen made extensive attempts to attract queens to nest in man-made boxes. (Free, page 164) More recently (ie. the last 20 years) there have been extensive research done on rearing bumblebees in captivity both for laboratory experimentation and for commercial pollination, expecially for greenhouse crops like tomatoes.
The basic ingredients for a successful bumblebee colony are: a healthy, broody queen bumblebee which has been inseminated; a subable nesting container (historically, an old mouse nest); and sufficent quanities of nectar; and fresh pollen. A lot of good experience is also very helpful.
Rearing bumblebee colonies both in the lab and luring into man made nesting boxes in not easy. Nelson Pomeroy of Zonda Bees, New Zealand writes, "Your initial failure rate is likely to be high so budget on a confining a minimum of twenty queens to get a colony or two." Chris Plowright also mentions in the appendix of Bumblebee Economics that you should expect a significantly less than 50% success rate, something on the order of 20% or less.
More recently there have been specific methods and techniques developed by both researchers and commerical growers to significantly improve the nesting success rates. One of the best references for lab rearing is the article "Rearing and using bumblebees for pollination of forage legume genetic resources" by Vladimír Ptacek and Jarmila Drobna. Perhaps with the recent problems and loss of honeybee colonies we will see the more efficent bumblebee used more in pollination services.
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