No berries without bees

Flowers and bees complement each other. The flowers need pollinators, and the bees are glad to be of service, as they search out pollen and nectar to survive. The beautiful red berries you can admire in our Skimmias in the autumn require a lot of work by thousands of busy bees. So, how exactly does that work?

3 years of growth

The berry-bearing Skimmias start out in life as small cuttings, after which they need more than 3 years to form the beautiful red berries that everyone admires so much. During this period, we look after them with our professional expertise, love for our craft, and our green fingers. We’re proud to do everything ourselves here, but in March and April of the second year, we happily enlist the services of thousands of bees.

Remember how that partnership between the flowers and the bees works?

The vegetable kingdom is also divided into males and females. Female Skimmias produce beautiful red berries, but they do need the help of male plants first, or to be more precise their pollen. This is where the bees come in. They transfer the pollen from the male to the female plants, albeit unintentionally. When bees collect nectar from the flowers of the male Skimma, some pollen sticks to their legs and body. If they then fly to a female Skimmia, the male pollen ends up on the flowers of the female plant.

Beehives

Our flowering berry-bearing Skimmias are very popular, especially around the festive season. Since we need the bees for those beautiful red berries, we’re very happy that we can place about 4 or 5 beehives in our nursery in the spring. The beekeeper in turn is happy that his bees can get plenty of pollen and nectar from us. It’s a win-win situation. Or win-win-win to be precise, as the bees are happy too. In this way, we make the world greener together, or redder if we include the berries!