The current rate of deforestation and destruction of natural flora and fauna has resulted in a drastic decline of natural pollinators. Farmers have now resulted to beekeeping alongside farming in order to increase pollinators ensuring crop yields and also to strengthen livelihoods through commercialization to increase economic revenue. Bees pollinate 70% of crops available for human consumption. There are approximately 30,000 species worldwide. In Kenya the most common species are African bees; honey bees and stingless bees
Pollination is considered to be the most important regulating and supporting to natural ecosystem services and maintenance of plant biodiversity for fruits, vegetables, seed production, nuts and other agricultural crops. Some type of crops has flowers that may only be pollinated during a short period of time, if it’s not pollinated during that time, the flowers will fall, no seeds, berries or fruit will develop. In order for pollination to take place there has to be sufficient number of bees. This is important where there is less time to pollinate a single flower or crops where the nectar production or bee visits takes place during the day at where the temperature is at a specific level. Lack of bees for pollination can lead to a loss of about 75% of the crop.
Honey bee pollination gives better quality and quantity of harvest. The best place to place an apiary on a farm is on unusable land in the plantation where there is forage for bees outside the blooming of the crop. This ensures there are strong colonies during the crop pollination period.
Bees are the best pollinators because of their great numbers, social life and their ability to pollinate a wide variety of different flowers. A colony with 20-8000 bees can visit flowers over a distance of 2km.
Benefits of sufficient pollination
- Tight clusters of fruits and seeds
- Uniform fruit set.
- Well filled seed pods
- Well shaped fruits
Many farmers do not recognize the need for bees and consequently most are killed by careless use of pesticides. It is important to protect the bees because more than one third of all plants or plant products consumed by human beings and animals directly or indirectly are dependent on bee pollination.
