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Feb. 24, 2000
Dear Steve,
I’m purchasing another group of 50 Osmia bees this year to help pollinate my fruit trees. Last year I purchased 50 Osmia bees from I.P.S., along with a nesting block and extra nesting straws. We live in Maumee, Ohio – a suburb of Toledo, in northwest Ohio. Though we have fairly moderate winters by Midwest standards, our spring temperatures stay cool well into May and sometimes June. We have two plum trees that require cross-pollination, and which bloom in mid April, well before the honeybees and bumblebees are active in most years. We also have a peach tree that blooms about the same time. We’ve always had poor pollination, especially with the plum trees, due to lack of local insect pollination that early in the spring, when temperatures are still so cool.
After trying the Osmia bees last season, we saw our best peach and plum production yet. Both plums always have wonderful blossoms, but produce few fruit due to poor cross-pollination. With the Osmia bees, we had at least a 10-fold increase in the plums that developed, and twice as many peaches as previous years.
The bees were kept refrigerated until the blooms on the trees started to open, then we put the bees outside to emerge from the nesting straws. Within a day or two we had the Osmia bees pollinating all the trees and the few early flowers in our yard.
We had also put up the purchased nesting block, and several more which I made myself, with the purchased nest straws inserted in the holes, and had fairly good luck with the bees nesting. Those nesting straws that obviously had bees nesting in them were removed from the blocks and have been refrigerated. We plan on putting those out, along with he newly purchased bees when the trees bloom again this spring- and hopefully we’ll have our own little bee colony to last us for several more years.
We wanted to let you know about our success and how pleased we are with the bees.
Thanks! Best regards,
Dan Kramer