Leafcutter Bees
Incubating bees for an alfalfa seed farm.
Growing up on an alfalfa seed farm, I learned a lot about bees. The most popular bees that are used on the farm are honeybees and leafcutter bees. These bees are used as pollinators for the fields. The honeybees were brought in by companies that the farmer would rent the hives from. But for the leafcutter bees, we bought the cocoons from someone in Canada, and they were shipped to us. We would have to store and incubate the bees.
The leafcutter bees were shipped in large cardboard barrels. They had to be kept cool in the transport process. They would use refrigerated trailers. The reason that the cocoons need to be kept at a certain temperature is to prevent them from hatching. We would receive them and place them in refrigerated trailers that we had on the farm. They kept them cool until it was time to incubate them. We called them the bee vans. I don’t know why, but that is what we called them.
In the bee vans were large metal racks that would hold wood trays. The wooden trays were about three inches deep, a foot by two feet. Everything that was in the vans was custom-built by the farmers. The vans were dimly lit. When it was time to start the incubation process, the cocoons were spread out in the wooden frames. The cocoons are green, with small cylinders made out of circular cuts of leaves. There are larvae of the bees…
