South Canterbury farms grow many different crops, and they do not all need pollinators in the same way.
A paddock of wheat or grass seed is mostly pollinated by wind. Potatoes are grown for their tubers, so bees are not needed to make the crop we harvest. Onions grown for bulbs are different again from onions grown for seed.
But white clover, carrot, radish and some other seed crops depend much more on insects moving pollen between flowers. That means a grower may need managed honey-bee hives in one paddock, while the crop next door needs no insect pollination at all.
Even where bees are needed, it is not always as simple as placing hives beside a crop. According to the Foundation for Arable Research, honey bees in Canterbury carrot seed crops have sometimes preferred flowering clover nearby instead of the crop they were brought in to pollinate. In hybrid carrot and radish crops, drone flies can also be very effective at carrying pollen between the rows that need it.
That is why farmers and beekeepers have to think about more than bee numbers. They watch flowering time, weather, hive strength, nearby plants, spray timing and the way pollen needs to move through a particular crop.
South Canterbury is especially interesting because we grow crops for seed as well as food. Some paddocks are producing the seed that farmers and gardeners will plant somewhere else next season.
So the real question is not simply, “Does this crop need bees?”
It is, “How does this crop reproduce, and which pollinators can help it do that?”