Apple crop in danger after cold weather creates bee shortage

As we have described in past weeks on this site, US apple growers have a had a lot of turmoil this spring -- from a parasitic mites reducing bee populations to cold spring temperatures damaging apple blossoms. Here is an article posted by the Duluth News Tribune on the plight of Minnesota growers.

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Additional information from All About Apples
Topper Sponsel, of Sponsel's Minnesota Harvest in Jordan, Minnesota was interviewed for a similar news report done by the local TV network in the Twin Cities. Its an excellent compliment to the printed article linked to above, and gives more specific unique details to the problems Minnesota orchards are facing.

Yesterday (Saturday, May 21, 2005) Joe Fryer, a news man from KARE 11 TV, the NBC affiliate in the Twin Cities, called me to comment on an article that ran in the St. Paul Pioneer Press (a similar article ran in Duluth, Minnesota/Superior, Wisconsin at http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/local/11710548.htm ). I gave him a basic discussion of apples, pollination, bees, freezes, poor conditions for be flight during bloom, and very poor setting conditions for apples in the critical time immediately following bloom.

He immediately came out to the orchard with a cameraman and filmed a story, which led off the 10 O'clock News. Even the teasers leading up to the news were orchard shots and bee shots. They did a good job and reported accurately. I'm not a sound-byte type of guy, as we know, so they had to edit to what they considered high points. There's no way, though, to explain what's all going on in a sound byte.

They showed as I cut open a damaged apple and an undamaged apple. I think that was very educational for folks who don't hang around apples. They filmed bee hives flying like crazy, but working on dandelions because apple blossom has passed. I reported that we had a full day of bee flight on Sunday, May 8 when the trees were in full bloom and then no flying at all until Sunday, May 15, when there were about three hours in the afternoon but not all that much bloom left to pollinate. But we're confident we got pollinated successfully in that short time because we own 300 to 600 of our own beehives (twenty-five would be sufficient to pollinate our entire crop in a normal year), which we overwintered in California, pollinating first almonds and then oranges. Since the oranges weren't done blooming by the time blossoms started to come on in Minnesota, we nearly missed our bloom opportunity here with the apples. But we unloaded the bees on Friday, May 6 and had that tremendous day on May 8, so we're very fortunate. We hadn't lost any bees due to parasites, and they were here in perfect timing and in huge numbers to take advantage of a very very limited pollination window.

I demonstrated for the news crew that it appears like we are setting a potentially full crop of apples. Right now, we're looking at apples of about 6 millimeters in size. All of the apples I've checked that are that size or larger are in perfect condition. I believe that none of the damaged apples would continue to grow as large as that. So it's pretty easy to view on a walk-by that there are viable apples in quantity.

All apple growers know that apple trees produce many times the number of apples they can carry all the way to harvest time. There is a "June drop" that occurs naturally every year in June in which the tree aborts a great number of them. The damaged apples we lost here this spring are no more important than those that the trees would eliminate in the June drop anyway, so we won't miss them. The important thing is that there seems to be enough for a full crop.

But then there could be hail storms, or high winds, or diseases, or insects. Or harvest-time disasters like an early freeze or poor ripening conditions. So you really never know until a crop is picked.

We've only had two short crops in our 35 years, so we have been extremely fortunate!