Better Pollinators than Honey Bees For Some Crops Bumble bees can be better pollinators than honey bees in many aspects. First, they fly at cooler temperatures and work at earlier and later hours than honey bees. Secondly, they have a special mode of pollination behavior called "buzz pollination" in that they vibrate their body in high frequency to shake the pollen loose from flowers. This behavior is more efficient and almost required for pollination in some crops such as eggplants, tomatoes (both solanaceous plants) and blueberries. Honey bee workers do not exihibit this behavior. Thirdly, they seem much better than honeybees in getting home when inside enclosures. The buzz pollination and homing ability makes them the ideal pollinator for greenhouse plants (mainly cucumbers and tomatoes). Honey bees can hardly perform in a green house setting because they get confused and would repeatedly bump into the invisible (to them) glass ceiling and cannot find their way home.

Bumble bees also work on flowers much faster than honeybees. In a three-year study (1992-94), Javorek, MacKenzie and Vander Kloet reported that a bumble bee worker pollinated twice as many lowbush blueberry flowers as a honey bee in the same amount of time, they also pollinated in 80 percent of their floral visits while honeybees only about 25 percent, they also deposited 34 tetrads (four pollen grains are fused together in blueberries) per visit while honeybees only 13. This makes a bumble bee about 24 times more efficient than a honey bee, on a worker for worker basis, for blueberry pollination. Some blueberry growers are using bumble bees as alternative pollinators.