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Strawberry worries: weather, honey bees
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The largest used equipment inventory in the Mid-Atlantic is only a click away. Visit our website by clicking here or visit us at one of our 11 locations throughout MD, DE, VA and PA.
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Strawberry worries: weather, honey bees
5.29.2007
By STEPHANIE JORDAN
Staff Reporter
QUEENSTOWN, Md. — Weather concerns and figuring out what’s happening to the honey bee population is on the minds of the researchers who led the 2007 Strawberry Twilight Tour at the Wye Research and Education Center.
Mike Newell, farm manager at the Wye, said that strawberry plants developed very well during the mild autumn, but then “fall kept going,” and there was no serious winter weather until February.
The plants got too large and had excessive crown growth, causing the berries to be smaller this year. There also was a lot of bud development, and the buds that were further along were killed.
“We can’t predict the weather,” Newell said. “We try to do everything right, but then Mother Nature throws a curve ball.”
To cope with extreme weather, such as the cold temperatures during the Easter holiday weekend, Newell suggests more aggressive row cover management.
Mike Embrey, apiary specialist with the University of Maryland, said he wanted to show tour participants what is happening to the nation’s honey bee population, but since they are suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), they leave the hive and die.
“It’s difficult to do an autopsy,” he said. “One day you have bees and the next day you have nothing.”
This is the third year, Embrey added, that researchers suspect bees are afflicted with CCD.
“There is CCD on the Shore,” he said.
Embrey talked about a recent meeting in Beltsville, Md., in which 34 top researchers gathered and came up with 35 theories of what could be happening to honey bees.
“It could be a combination of factors,” he said. “What is the commonality? We haven’t figured that out yet.”
So far, most growers have been able to get honey bees to pollinate their crops, although Embrey said he was aware of one Pennsylvania grower who had difficulty in finding bees.
“If this happens for a few more years, we’re going to be in trouble,” he said.
There is some research from the West Coast that indicates that certain fungicides are being seen as repellant to certain bees because of their smell, and it can take up to two weeks before bees return to the hive.
Some research in New Zealand points to spreader-stickers (which are added to fungicides so that they stay on the plant better) — a bee’s wings can get glued to the flower. Embrey’s advice to growers is to spray later in the day, because most bee activity is in the morning.
Embrey will be involved in several research projects that will look at how to save the honey bee.