Bee Diversity and Orchards

[ysabetwordsmith]

 Orchards do better with more diverse bee populations.  Bees are more diverse in orchards surrounded by wilderness than by farms.

I am reminded of elven farming, which isn't done in vast tracts, but rather in little meadows and orchards whittled out of the surrounding wilderness.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

That works best if there is some surrounding wilderness... which unfortunately, is rather rare nowadays.

Modern agriculture tends towards vast tracts of mono-culture farming, wilderness is something consigned to areas that aren't viable for farming, and that's a vanishing small percentage of land nowadays.

[cmcmck]

It amazes me how many species of bees there are since moving close to ancient woodland.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

There are about 20,000 bee species in all, around 4,000 in America.

Regrettably I could not find an estimate for how many are needed to have a "healthy" environment. I would say, look at the number of bees native to your area; you should have as many of those as possible. More than half is probably good; less than half is probably bad. But the more bees there could be, the more fault tolerance there is; if you only have a few species to start with, losing even one could be very bad.