Graph: Standing crop of open flowers

Slide 17 of 21
Notes:

(Model insights:)

I ran the model over a hypothetical season for a series of bee population sizes and found that the standing crop of open flowers over time fit a pattern very close to what I had been observing in the field. Standing crop increases rapidly to a peak, then decreases more slowly. The peak standing crop is lower as the number of introduced bees increases. In addition, the time it takes to completely pollinate the field decreases as the number of introduced bees increases. This was precisely what growers had been describing to me: more bees means faster pollination. This is the advantage to using a large number of bees to pollinate the crop. It decreases the time to complete pollination. Many growers try to put out enough bees to pollinate flowers as quickly as they come into bloom during the peak of bloom. That of course means they run out of flowers sooner.

(The values on the axes above for number of open flowers and for time are only very rough estimates. They could vary depending on the initial values put into the model. More important is the shape of the curves that are generated in the model, i.e., the pattern of standing crop over time.)

To see a practical application of this conclusion go to "A test to determine if you have enough bees in your field", slide show Part 3.

Strickler, K. 1997. Flower production and pollination in Medicago sativa L. Grown for seed: model and monitoring studies. In, K.W. Richards, ed. Proc. Int’l Symp. on Pollination Acta Horticulturae 437, ISHS pp. 109-113. Fig. 4