Crispin’s Beekeeping provide good, clean, hard working bees for pollination, and for an exiting new way to control fungal disease that uses bees to deliver biological control to flowers (called ‘entomovectoring’).
Bees used to control cherry brown rot
Cherry brown rot is caused by the fungi Botrytis cinerea and Monilinia spp. that can enter fruit during flowering. Nearly all growers use fungicidal sprays at flowering but now bees can be used to deliver biological control of the disease.
According to Crispin Boxhall, entomovectoring is an added service that he provides where a specially designed dispenser is fitted to the front of each hive.
“The dispenser guides the bees to walk through a control agent on their way out of the hive,” Crispin said. “The bees pick up the control agent between their body hairs as they walk through and then distribute it to flowers during flower visits.”
The grower provides the environmentally friendly biocontrol product (can be purchased from OCP). It contain spores of Trichoderma spp. which inhibit the growth of Botrytis and Monilinia spp.
Benefits of entomovectoring include: targeted to flowers; daily delivery; reduced use of heavy machinery, fuel, labour and water; no spray drift; does not elicit resistance.
Contact Crispin Boxhall phone 0477 172 171
crispinsbeekeeping.com
See this article in Tree Fruit September 2016
