Alvin Rutledge, PhD, Private Horticulture Consultant
"Even a small producer will have to have bees involved in pollination. Even a small strawberry grower will have to have it, peach growers, apple growers will have to have honey bees involved in their operation in order to produce a fruit that will go out on the market."

Danny Shelton, Farmer - New Market, Tennessee
"A year or two we got a little stingy and wouldn't put many bees, used half a hive or less per acre... Dr. Rutledge and the bee association people talked us into using more bees and we have seen yields go up cooresponding to that. Bees pay."

Allen Straw, PhD, UT Ag Extension
"If you go out into a cucurbit field early in the morning a lot of times you will see a lot of those native bees but there's not enough to rely on so we have to have the honey bees. What we're finding is that there's places people really suffer significant yield loss because they don't have the bee population they need. Our rule of thumb is we have to have a hive for every acre of cucurbit crop."