Bumble bees: a new pollinator in Indian Agriculture

Adequate pollination in crop ecosystem is an important element to achieve crop production targets being tried by employing various techniques. Dominating pollinators like honey bee is not suited to closed environment like polyhouses. Moreover, it is required to have an alternate back up pollinator for meeting the pollination needs of various crop ecosystems. For this the bumble bees are advantageous over the honey bees due to their long working hours, long tongue length, effectiveness in less numbers and their capacity to forage vigorously at low temperature and low light intensities. Standardization of technology is of paramount importance for the native species such as Bombus haemorrhoidalis as they are more adapted and suited to native conditions. Bumble bees reared under confined laboratory conditions can be utilized for the pollination of crops grown under protected conditions. A twenty two per cent increase in total monitory returns was obtained from bumble bee pollinated cucumber crop grown in polyhouse at cost benefit ratio of 1: 2.02.