Bumblebee Keeper

Bumblebee keeping is a unique enterprise. Forget what you know of (honey) beekeeping: this is a different game, and Nelson Pomeroy lays it bare. In a candid account of his career as a student, scientist, businessman and teacher, he details most aspects of working with bumblebees: outdoor nesting sites, laboratory observation hives, crop pollination and commercial-scale rearing. His innovations range from specialist concrete to electric heating systems, mass-producible colony starting containers and bumblebee feeding systems. Bumblebee colonies are small, with a peak of up to a few hundred bees. He grapples with this from various angles-from measuring colony productivity and foraging strength to measuring pollination stocking rates. Bumblebee Keeper blends a personal narrative with practical information. It will interest readers from pollination management through bee biologists to those with an interest in agro-technologies. It concludes with a selection of bumblebee conservation issues and challenges decision-makers on the best approach to sustainability of pollination for food security.