Healthy Bee Populations Leading to Good Blueberry Harvest
Contact: Dave Yarborough, 581-2923; Frank Drummond, 581-2989; George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO – Following yesterday’s annual summer meeting and wild blueberry field day held at UMaine’s Blueberry Hill Farm and research station in Jonesboro, Maine’s blueberry growers are cautiously optimistic about expecting a healthy crop this year, according to University of Maine experts.
The blueberry harvest begins this week in Southern Maine, next week in the Mid-Coast area and the first week of August in the extensive blueberry barrens of Downeast Maine.
David Yarborough, Extension blueberry specialist and Extension professor of horticulture, is expecting an average or slightly above average yield of 80-100 million pounds of berries, thanks to adequate rain in May and June. The hot and humid, but largely dry, first few weeks of July stressed crops to some degree, he says, but recent showers are refreshing most crops.
Yarborough says that healthy honey bee colonies also played a role in enabling good pollination by more than 69,000 “migrant” hives, those brought in from throughout the country specifically for blueberry growers. They were assisted by hives from an estimated 1,600 Maine-based hives, plus wild, or native, bees.
As far as we know honey bee colonies in Maine continue to thrive unaffected by colony collapse disorder (CCD), which has decimated many hives elsewhere in the nation over the past three years, according to entomologist Frank Drummond, professor of insect ecology and entomology.
Honey bees also have not suffered significantly from the Varoa mite, a parasite that infests and kills bees, but bee keepers are worried because the number of measures that control the parasites are dwindling as the mites develop resistance.
“The honey bee industry is stable, but precarious right now,” says Drummond. “Blueberry growers didn’t have any trouble getting colonies to pollinate their fields and it’s going to be a great crop.”
Drummond notes that bee keepers face increasing health threats to native bee populations because of a variety of environmental hazards, including increased use of insecticides used residentially, and the possibility of infections carried by seasonally imported honey bees.