Tuesday, April 22: Apricots at the Hudson Valley Lab were in full bloom this afternoon. Trees on top of the hill behind the lab showed very little bud damage, but other apricots planted in a colder area on the back side of the hill had hardly enough flowers to set a crop.
I’m fascinated by the fact that apricots in our orchard often appear to attract a wider range of pollinating insects than we see in other tree fruit crops. Perhaps that occurs because apricots are the first trees to come into bloom, the insects are hungry, and we have relatively few apricot trees, thereby forcing the pollinators to congregate on the few available trees. Today apricot trees were buzzing with honeybees, bumble bees, and at least two or three other kinds of pollinators. Neither we nor any close neighbors maintain honeybees, so we presume that the honeybees we see at this time of year, before nearby orchardists bring in rented hives for their apples, are probably wild bees that live in the woodlots or abandoned orchard land that surrounds our research orchards in Highland, NY.
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Apricot pollinators (enlarged)
(click on link for larger photos)
