What fruit trees attract bees? Honey bees and fruit trees

BEES AND FRUIT

Close neighbors claim the bees are eating their grapes and peaches, and one man said they destroyed all of his peach crop. The birds are plentiful here and I tried to explain that it is the birds, but they won’t listen to me and want me to move the bees. Can you help me?

Yours is not a localized problem. The Dadant family here in Hamilton went through this same problem themselves many years ago. Finally, to prove their point, they planted some large acreages of grapes just to show the skeptics. It was expensive but the experiment proved that bees will not, as some people have thought, sting or bite grapes or any other fruit and draw out all of the juices. The question has also been asked, “If bees can gnaw through a newspaper, why are they unable to cope with the delicate skin of a grape?”

Newspaper is made up of small units or fibers and is rough under the microscope, so the bees are able to catch hold of these little particles with their mandibles and tear them away. They are also highly motivated to do so, usually to escape from one container into another or to release a queen whose pheromones are quite attractive to them. Bees cannot catch hold of absolutely slick surfaces under any circumstances and the skins of grapes and most fruits are far too slick for bees to handle.

Sometimes, after birds or other insects have broken the skins of fruits and if there is little or no nectar available from their natural sources, bees may work on the fruit juice oozing from the damaged fruit.