BEES AND APPLE TREES
It is a cold morning late in March in northern Italy, and pink and white flowers are just beginning to open on the apple trees. In the distance, snow can still be seen on the surrounding mountains. Every year this beautiful sight attracts thousands of tourists, many of whom join guided tours of the apple orchards. On these tours, organized by local farmers, they taste samples of the region's high-quality apples and learn how the fruit is grown.(lines 1–5)
When visitors walk through the orchards in March, they see dozens of bees flying around, transferring pollen* from flower to flower. Many of the visitors know that bees play this essential role in the development of fruit from the flowers. However, when they look more closely, something surprises them. "They expect to see honeybees – the only pollinators* they learned about in school," says apple farmer Marco Conti. "Instead, they see black shiny bees. These are wild bees known as mason bees, and they are the only ones that can pollinate* flowers in cold weather. But in April, when it's warmer, I bring in honeybees in hives to join the mason bees."(lines 6–12)
Pollinating the earliest flowers is not the only advantage mason bees have over honeybees. As Conti tells his visitors, they also carry much more pollen as they fly between flowers. "As a result, almost all the flowers that a mason bee visits get the pollen they need to produce fruit," he says. "Honeybees visiting flowers have a much lower rate of success."(lines 13–16)
Conti then explains to his visitors why farmers don't rely exclusively on mason bees. "First of all, these bees fly only a few hundred meters," he says. "This means they pollinate only a relatively small part of large orchards like mine. Honeybees, on the other hand, fly several kilometers, so they can pollinate all my trees. Besides, with both types of bee in the orchard you get a wonderful effect on fruit production. At harvest time there are many more apples, most of them large and crisp – just the way people want them."(lines 17–22)
Among the many attractions of Conti's orchard are the beautiful flowers that grow between the trees. Conti had planted them following guidelines developed by scientists over the past ten years. The guidelines help apple farmers throughout Europe improve the mason bees' health. For example, planting different types of flowers ensures that the bees get all the essential nutrients they need. These are never provided by a single type of flower.(lines 23–27)
The guidelines are also aimed at increasing the population of mason bees. One of their recommendations, for example, is the use of so-called "bee hotels" – carefully designed structures where female mason bees lay their eggs. Built of rows of small wooden tubes, these structures help protect the bees developing inside from various dangers, including certain birds that eat them. "I'm one of several apple farmers around here who have put bee hotels in our orchards," says Conti. "And now we all have mason bees in much larger numbers. That is great news for us, of course, and also for apple lovers."(lines 28–34)