Flower toothbrushing

Pollination research. It is no mystery that bees are the chief pollinator for all types of flowers including those that ultimately become edible as in tree fruits and berries such as blueberries. But with declining bee populations worldwide, researchers are trying to figure out the role of bees in producing good fruit. Dr. Rufus Isaacs, Michigan State University entomologist and research director, is conducting a study with three different types of pollination techniques in order to determine the role of honeybees versus other bees as pollinators. "There are three treatments on every bush that we are doing this yield assessment on. One of them is that the flowers were counted before they opened and then we put a bag over them. They will never get visited by a bee and we will get to see how many of the flowers turned into fruit and how big those fruit are if there is no pollination. The second treatment is open to pollinators so during the period of bloom, bees were able to visit it and that is how much pollination the bees provided. The third treatment where we used the toothbrush to put the pollen on, that's open to the bees but then we had this supplemental pollen to get as much pollination as we possibly can and then we will be able to compare those three treatments to see what we are getting and what we could get if we improve pollination."

I saw a video of the toothbrush technique and it is a research student literally brushing a flower with an electric toothbrush.