Tag Archives: PIICM

Bees

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One of the more important elements in the Pine Island Integrated Crop Management (PIICM) program is ensuring adequate pollination; flowers that are not visited by bees rarely produce fruit. To this end, we work with Fruitwood Orchards and other New Jersey beekeepers to temporarily install hives during the bloom period, usually at the end of May/beginning of June depending on the weather.

According to Jeremy Ham of Fruitwood Orchards, they ordinarily work the bees beforehand so that not a lot of maintenance is necessary; they’ll typically lose some after blueberry season, but for the cranberry farmers Fruitwood will put in more brood (eggs) and a new queen. Pine Island uses them strictly for pollination, so extra work with the bees is not usually necessary; however, the beekeepers return every week to pull the honey.

Research has shown that honeybees are competent at pollinating cranberry flowers as long as the weather remains satisfactory, according to the USDA. The recent heat wave bears this out. Going out with employee Timothy Haines to count bees, he states that he has rarely been stung. “On really hot days all they care about are the flowers,” he says. “It’s when things get overcast that they rise up a little.”

Counting bees is a necessity in order to make sure there are enough to cover the blossoms; to do this, Timothy sets a timer for ten minutes and then counts every bee he sees actually on the bloom. On this particular day at Blueberry Hill, he counts 126. “That’s good,” he says. “You want to have over a hundred.” The more bees, the more pollination, the greater the yield come harvest time.

All of us on the Pine Island team, including our vendors, do whatever it takes to ensure that we achieve our mission: to grow more high-quality cranberries at the lowest cost. By bringing in the bees at exactly the right time, we live our core value of continuous growth by producing more fruit per acre.

Plant nutrition

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One of the goals of our Pine Island Integrated Crop Management (PIICM) program is to continuously improve our decisions: we often do this through learning opportunities via advice from specialists.  Last week, we had a visit from Dr. Joan Davenport, of Washington State University. Joan, a former researcher for Ocean Spray, works with Pine Island Cranberry to provide guidance on fertilizer, water, and nutrients, as well as general PIICM management.

Joan comes to work with us at this time of year, as adjusting nutrition is most vital just prior to bloom (and again in late July/early August for bud set) in order to help production for the current as well as successive years.

Joan goes out into the bogs with our PIICM manager Cristina Tassone (as well as Dan Schiffhauer of Ocean Spray) in order to best determine the nutrition needed for optimum crop yields and quantity. Another one of the keys to our PIICM program is giving vines the nutrients they need, when they need it; the amount of fertilizer to be applied is determined by variety, soil conditions, and past practices, requiring constant evaluation of current conditions, history, and trends. Nutritional needs are different for young vines as opposed to established plantings, as well.

Joan’s expertise as a soil scientist with a specialization in perennial fruit crops is invaluable to our PIICM program. In established beds she looks for growth as well as amount and color of old leaves from as far back as two seasons. This means that it is critical to keep accurate, detailed records on past practices.

After surveying both new planting and established beds, Joan will send us a report with her findings and suggestions for scheduling and fertilizer amounts. We use this report as a guideline as we continuously evaluate crop conditions throughout the growing season.