Allotments 4 All

Why do some beans not mature in the pod while others do? Anybody?
      

I find peas do the same thing Ina.  Experts please!  ;D

Nice beans by the way Ina.  Going to the plot tomorrow and hoping for a picking....if I can beat the darn mice!  :-\

Hi EJ, I wonder what would cause this.
Nice beans? These were short ones. The most beans I found in one pod was seven, six average in the big beans.

It's very complicated with lots of long words but basicaly it's the bees fault ;D

So the bees don't wiggle and jiggle enough in one flower, and then snuffle and ruffle properly in another?

Yup, something like that, I think the cold weather puts them off

They look nice enough to me ...

Mine are still at the flower stage - No idea what to expect next as this is the first year I have ever grown anything. ???

Radishes have come up like clementines !  Broad beans... still waiting  ??? ???

It's down to poor pollination. Two things have happened; the number of wild pollinators has declined due to pollution and loss of habitat, while the number of honeybees has declined due to the varroa mite. This is an Asian mite straight from the pits of hell, which jumped species from the Asian honeybee, which can cope with it, to ours, which can't, and spread worldwide. Since its arrival in the UK, it's virtually wiped out feral colonies (which probably made up 3/4 or so of the bee population), devastated beekeeping, and driven a lot of people out of it. It keeps developing resistance to the chemicals used to control it, which have very adverse effects on the bees anyway, and there's still no really satisfactory solution. I may (I still have to run the vital tests) have bees which are partially resistant, but not many people can even say that much.

I can't offer any simple solution to this. You could try putting a dozen beehives on your plot, but they're extremely efficient at ferreting out the best nectar and pollen sources around, and a few rows of broad beans might be completely ignored; mine usually are. If you could encourage wild pollinators which were active at the right time, that might work better.

Thanks for that in-depth explanation Robert.  I am just hoping mine will come up a little more .... errm full.  :D

Thank you MT and Robert, for your explanations.
I don't understand it completely. I thought a flower gets fertilized or not, does this mean it can be partially fertilized?

Yes. You'd probably find that a pollen grain is needed for each individual bean. Multiple insect visits are really needed for reliable pollination. Obviously, they're not getting them.

Hi all,

My three short rows of broadies were in flower when the weather was cold and changable but when the sun did come out bees would visit the flowers. There wasn`t much else to visit. They seem to be coming along ok. I was amazed that anything got germinated at that time but apparently it did.

A lottie neighbour of mine is also a very keen photographer and his mega-pixel photos of bees taken on our plots show that they are free of mites. Hopefully this is the case wider afield in this part of the world (East Anglia).

Maybe these sites will help (live bumble bee kits)

http://www.greenworm.co.uk/kits/bumble_bee.htm

http://www.just-green.com/BreakingNews_02.asp

Col

Foraging bees usually are free of mites, since the horrible things spend their lives in the broodnest. They're hard to see on a bee, and if you do see them, it's a sign of a serious infestation.