Leafcutter Bees
Leafcutter bees are the primary and most effective pollinator of alfalfa seed crops. Alongside honey bees, they are also used for the pollination of hybrid seed canola crops. Leafcutter bees are essential to optimize seed yields in alfalfa due to the inability of honey bees and other natural pollinators to effectively pollinate alfalfa flowers. Leafcutter bees are stocked in alfalfa seed fields at a rate of 1-4 gallon(s) per acre. Growers use a wide variety of tents, huts, domes and shelters to stock their fields. In addition to pollinating alfalfa blooms, leafcutter bees gather leaf material from alfalfa plants and use the collected material to form cocoons in tunneled blocks stocked in fields for this express purpose. In these tunnels, leafcutter bees lay larvae that will serve as pollinators for the following crop year.
Depending on the scale of seed production on the farm, many growers build their own climate-controlled infrastructure for housing and incubating leafcutter bees through the offseason. If this is not feasible for the operation, producers will turn to custom pollinators to stock their fields. Typically, custom pollinators are paid for their work through a crop share arrangement.
In most regions of Western Canada, leafcutter bees are considered a “crop” of their own that is secondary to the seed crop. Depending on location, growers may double or even triple their bees in a season. These excess bees are either kept by the producer for their own use or sold to bee brokers or other producers. If not resold domestically, the vast majority of leafcutter bees are sold into the United States via bee brokers. This is due to the fact that leafcutter bee returns are typically lower there. Depending on region, American producers often do not “get their bees back” at a 1:1 ratio that matches the rate at which their fields were originally stocked. Thus, new bees must be purchased every year.
Like alfalfa seed markets, leafcutter bee markets have been consistently strong for the last number of years.
