Bees, of course, would not be bees without the flowers they pollinate, so much of Margie’s work revolves around the lowbush blueberry and other floral resources visited by blueberry-pollinating bees. Unlike many blueberry farms elsewhere, the agriculture of blueberries here on the island does not involve shipping large numbers of a single commercially-rented bee species to pollinate crops. Instead, the industry here in Newfoundland relies completely on the native, local bees to accomplish this task. This is considered a more ecologically sensitive practice as studies in other parts of the country have suggested that there may be pathogens transferred from the commercially-imported bees to the native bee population while they’re visiting the same flowers. This raises many questions about: 1) the difference in pollination rates between the native lowbush blueberries and farmed blueberries, 2) which species are successfully pollinating these flowers, 3) whether it is the species that specialize in pollinating blueberries that have the biggest influence on successful pollination or just sheer numbers of a given species. Although, blueberries are in bloom, for at most, one month of the year and all of Newfoundland’s native bees depend on the many other flowering plants during the rest of the growing season and this, which Margie refers to as “floral resources” is also taken into account. The composition of flora and their reproductive cycles have direct effects of bee populations.



Upon discussion of her research I was delighted to unearth an intriguing fact that some bees are boxers by profession. Leafcutter & Mason Bees in the family Megachilidae use their middle legs and honeybees use their front legs  to box lowbush blueberry stamens to release pollen grains. Bumblebees also 'sonicate', which simply means that they vibrate the muscles in their thorax (where legs and wings stem from) and touch it to the blossom to physically shake the pollen off of the blueberry anthers.



Unlike much of North America and other parts of the world which report mass decline in bee populations, Margie was glad to state that although the the exact statistics are not known and thorough research had not been yet conducted in this area, Newfoundland seems to be unaffected by this pattern that is emerging elsewhere and there seems to be no decline in bee populations.



Pollination is not an easy business, particularly if it is fruit that you want. Blueberries (Vaccinium angustifolium) do not self pollinate readily, more so, when cross pollinated with pollen from the same clonal individual there is a very low rate of success. Often, out of a particular number of flowers, for whatever reason, only a certain subset of them fully develop  to become mature fruit. The rate at which inflorescences produce mature fruit is termed the “fruit set”. Margie had exhaustively counted the numbers of pollen on the stigmas (female pollen receptacle) of blueberry flowers to determine the rate at which these flowers were being pollinated.