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Bees scrabbling for pollen set a greater percentage of the flowers they visit than bees collecting nectar.The pollinating efficiency of visits is much greater to self-compatible than to self-incompatible varieties; on the latter the efficiency decreases as distance from the source of compatible pollen increases.Calculations indicate that one colony of honey-bees probably provides enough foragers to pollinate sufficient flowers to give an economic set in an acre of apple orchard.
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J. B. Free (1966) studied this question.
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