The Rural Voice, 1998-11, Page 10%1 610411
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6 THE RURAL VOICE
Scrap Book
Bees boost yields and fight pests
It's well known that honey bees
increase yields of many crops by
pollinating the flowers but
researchers at North Dakota State
University have discovered that
bees can help sunflower crops by
spreading the natural pesticide
Bacillus thuringiensis, commonly
know as BT.
BT is a bacteria that kills the
larvae of moths and butterflies,
including the banded sunflower
moth, a significant pest for North
Dakota sunflower growers.
The fact that bees can help
sunflowers is a happy development
in North Dakota which is the United
States' top producer of sunflowers
and second highest producer of
honey. There are 1.1 million acres
of sunflowers and 245,000 colonies
of bees.
The North Dakota research
harkens back to the 1940s when
researchers discovered bees in apple
orchards in Washington State could
transmit apple diseases such as fire
blight. Forty years later researchers
developed a device to dust bees with
bacteria that fights fire blight.
"In North Dakota we knew pest
insects were moving into the fields
at the same time bees were
working," said Gary Brewer, and
entomologist at NDSU. "So why
couldn't we use the same
technique."
Brewer and student Jawahar
Jyoti built a BT applicator to be
placed at hive exits. As bees left the
hive they were covered with BT.
Despite instinctive efforts to clean
themselves, the bees still carried and
deposited enough BT on sunflower
heads to kill the larvae of banded
sunflower moths. Control of the
moths in a one -acre plot was as
good as control provided by
spraying BT and other pesticides.
Using bees to protect sunflowers
from pests can be good for the bees
too. "Broadcast insecticides are a
beekeeper's biggest enemy," said
Don Nelson, a Minnesota beekeeper
who supplied the bees for the
experiment. If bees can help farmers
combat insects without spraying
honey production will increase.
But the bees don't need to carry
BT to benefit sunflowers, the
researchers found. A yield boost of
up to five per cent due to better
pollination and seed set in the test
plots was a surprise, Brewer said.
Other researchers have report -ed
yield increases of up to 15 per cent.
"If we can get a yield boost from
improved seed set that is greater
than the Toss caused by a pest, we'll
still be getting a net increase,"
Brewer said. "We may not need to
use BT at all. "0
— Source: North Dakota State
University Extension Service
Weird ways work with biological controls
Six and eight -legged creatures have started landing in flying saucers on
American farms and devouring their living prey. The craft isn't a spaceship. It's
Bugslinger or Aerodynamic Transport Body.
Actually it is an adapted clay pigeon, developed by the Agricultural Research
Service as a way to deploy pest -killing bugs and mites into fields.
It's one of two developments by the service to help distribute biological
controls to crops that need them. The other is the Mite Meter a tank that can be
calibrated to dispense different numbers of mites needed to kill certain crop
pests.
Agricultural engineers Lyle Carter and Joseph Chesson, along with machinist
John Penner, based at ARS Western Integrated Cropping Systems Research Unit
in Shifter, California, invented the devices for strategically scattering the
beneficial insects.
The Bugslinger launcher can be mounted on a truck or tractor or ATV and
would travel along field roads, slinging saucers as it goes. The researchers' test
show that even the delicate biocontrol wasp Aphelinus nr. paramali survives the
Bugslinger disc's 177 km. speed and 175-G rotational force.0
—Source: The Western Producer