The importance of bees and other insects for pollination and thus the harvest of apples has been emphasized for decades. If there are bottlenecks due to a lack of insect visits to the apple blossoms, you can also help yourself if necessary.
How to promote pollination of an apple tree?
To help pollinate an apple tree, plant several apple trees of different varieties, provide nesting and feeding opportunities for insects, or do the pollination with a soft brush and apple pollen from another tree.
Without pollination there are no fruits
While most types of grain are self-fertile or are sufficiently pollinated by the wind, an apple tree needs insects to visit its flowers in order to produce fruit. This ensures the principle of evolution in nature by creating new apple varieties from the combination of the tree's own genetic material and the pollen's own genetic material. Since the pollen from a flower usually gets stuck on the abdomen of bees, it can end up on the pistil in the next flower by being brushed off or accidentally.
Ensure sufficient pollination in your own garden
The pollen from another flower on the same apple tree is usually not enough to ensure pollination and fruit formation. Therefore, as a garden owner, you should plan well in advance and ideally plant several apple trees of different varieties in the garden. The bee colonies of a beekeeper in the neighborhood often ensure a higher yield of all fruit trees because, in contrast to other flying insects, bees are flower-continuous and so only collect the nectar and pollen of certain types of plants during a collecting flight. You can also increase pollination performance by creating sufficient nesting and feeding opportunities for wild bees, bumblebees and other flower-visiting flying insects.
Take on the job of the bee yourself
In China it is already a sad reality that something that usually only happens in breeding farms in this country: the pollination of apple blossoms by hand by humans. If you notice a lack of insect visits to the flowers in your garden, you can also help with fertilization yourself. For this you need the following things:
- Apple pollen from another apple tree (a couple full of flowers from a gardening friend is enough)
- a soft, long-haired brush
- a ladder
- some patience
Use the brush to carefully pick up some pollen from the prepared container. Then dip it into the flowers on the tree and move the tip of the brush slightly. Repeating this process hundreds of times requires patience, but in extremely isolated locations it can pay off with a larger harvest.
Tips & Tricks
Some beekeepers rent out their bee colonies so that garden owners can successfully fertilize their fruit trees in this way. This usually doesn't cost very much and saves you having to visit every apple blossom with a brush.
