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OBTAINING AND PROTECTING RED-CLOVER POLLINATING SPECIES OF BOMBUS (HYMENOPTERA: APIDAE)1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2012

G. A. Hobbs
G. A. Hobbs
Affiliation:
Research Station, Canada Department of Agriculture, Lethbridge, Alberta
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Abstract

The use of false-underground hives (surface hives with tunnels attached to their entrances) when and where the desired species of bumblebees were common made the task of obtaining colonies for pollination purposes comparatively easy. False-underground hives were much less costly to set out than underground hives and attracted many more queens of surface-nesting and versatile species, as well as underground-nesting species, than did surface hives. Apparently the surface-nesting species will accept a nest that is entered through an upward-sloping tunnel but not one that must be reached through a downward-sloping tunnel; underground-nesting species require a tunnel but are not influenced by the direction of its slope.

Setting occupied hives on posts with moats protected the queens or their broods from flooding, ants, ground squirrels, skunks, mice, shrews, and ungulates, but not from Psithyrus, even when odoriferous substances were put in the moats to mask the odor of the broods.

Type
Articles
Information
The Canadian Entomologist , Volume 99 , Issue 9 , September 1967 , pp. 943 - 951
Copyright
Copyright © Entomological Society of Canada 1967

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References

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