Pollinating Berry Crops

Pollination of Berry Crops: The cheapest and easiest way to produce more and better berries

Pollination is not often considered in the same terms as fertilizer or water, but is just as important.

Pollination is the process of transferring pollen from the stamens of one flower to the pistil of a neighbouring flower.

Pollen is collected when it becomes entangled in the dense branched hairs on the bee's body. A bee will make 1-50 pollen collecting trips per day, visiting 50-350 flowers per trip.

Blueberries must be insect pollinated for the fruit to set. Blueberries flower early in the year when there are few natural pollinators about. It is essential for growers of large acreages to get supplemental pollinators to ensure good fruit set.

Raspberries and blackberries are aggregate fruits, meaning that each flower has a number of separate pistils, each of which must be pollinated for formation of the drupelet.

Raspberries and blackberry cultivars range from completely self-fruitful to completely self-unfruitful. Most erect blackberries are fruitful, but trailing cultivars often require cross pollination. However, it has been found that even in self-fruitful cultivars, providing insect pollination greatly enhances yield.

For some berry crops it has been shown that removal of all insect pollination leads to a 40% drop in fruit production. The quality of non-insect pollinated fruit is also significantly lower. To obtain a large, well-formed berry most of the individual pistils in the flower should be pollinated. Inadequate pollination results in smaller or imperfect fruit, since not all seeds and drupelets are formed. To obtain good pollination each flower needs to be visited 5 or more times, preferably over 4 or more days.

For optimal pollination, bees must be collecting and distributing the pollen.

For more information please download our booklet and BCBC Newsletter Articles