Bee Vectoring Technologies Pt 1
With today’s Fruit Grower Report, I’m Bob Larson. A Canadian company is taking a natural approach to protecting crops from pests and the diseases they carry … and it’s causing quite the “buzz.”Greg Faust, with Bee Vectoring Technologies, says they’re using a, “since you’re already going that way” approach to spread biopesticides …
FAUST … “We’re using bees, both honey bees and bumble bees, to essentially vector a biopesticide out to the flowering plants on their normal journey when they’re pollinating.”
The system, Faust says changes very little of the bee does naturally …
FAUST … “As they leave the hive, they walk through a product called Vectorite which contains the biological agent, the biopesticide. As they visit each flower for pollination purposes some spores of this biopesticide fall on to the flower. These spores then germinate on the flower and colonize that flower essentially and outcompete the bad funguses, such as Botrytis, Sclerotinia, Monilinia, and keep the flower essentially disease free, thereby really helping the growers manage their disease issues at the same time that the bees are doing the pollination.”
And this method, Faust says works well with their newly approved Vectorite …
FAUST … “Our biopesticide is called Clonostachys Rosea, CR7, and EPA did just clear it in September.”
Faust says their Vectorite with CR7 is approved in 11 different crop groups, including apple, strawberry and blueberry.
Tune in tomorrow for more on Bee VT’s naturally-derived biological that helps control disease and increase crop yields by as much as 29%.