[bravemurphy]

I thought it was going to be a good year for my beans with loads and loads of flowers.

On inspection I noticed lots of flowers on the floor.

So I watched the Bees for a bit and noticed that they are being lazy and getting at the nectar the same way they do with the comfrey, biting a hole in the flower and so not pollinating them 

Is there anything that can be done?

Like shake the plants or something?

[AnneB]

I am worried my Wizards are going the same way.   Bees observed drilling through the flower at the base.   Not many flowers on the floor, but no pods yet either and beans covered in tons of flowers. 

I have read you can mist the flowers with water to encourage setting or hand pollinate with a paintbrush (time consuming).

Has anyone tried either of these with any success?

[solway cropper]

I recently read a report on bee pollinators and it seems that the honey bee does the hole boring to extract nectar from bean flowers but the bumble bee actually goes inside and gets covered in pollen. So you need to attract certain types of bees and not others. It's a truly fascinating subject.

[prakash_mib]

Flowers will wither away .... It doesn't mean mean pollinations hasn't happened .  FYI petals of flowers are in colours just to attract bees ... Nothing to do with your final product.. Don't lost sleep and you will be alright.. 

[bravemurphy]

None of my bumbles are getting inside they are all going in from the back and very fast there are too.

[Snoop]

I've had this going on for a few years. I fretted about it enormously for two seasons - broad beans and sprouts are my OH's favourite veg. To cut a long story short, after watching for a while, I came to the conclusion that a lot of the flowers still get pollinated, possibly before the big bumbles come along. Plus, broad bean plants produce an enormous number of flowers, far more than they could support as beans. So flowers dropping off is probably entirely normal.

[brokenglass]

I thought that it was the short tongues bees that bit through the flowers and the long tongued bees that entered the flowers.     The short tongues bees can't reach the pollen any other way.

[Goosegirl]

I've looked up this topic about different bees and how some go into the back of the flowers, mainly because my runner flowers were dropping off and I didn't know why, but have noticed with broads as well.

[beesrus]

I wouldn't worry about those sort of bees where broad beans are concerned. Most Runners, that aren't self-fertile like broadies, are a different matter, and the bee thing is one of the reasons I have tried some self fertile runners for the first time this year as  back-up. Those bees can be a nuisance if you're unlucky.
The first flush of flowers often don't set much on young broad bean plants, it's almost as if they know they're too young to produce anything decent from all their fluff and show. They look terrific though. Outside of black fly, I have never known healthy broad beans not to crop decently in the end. The bean set ratio increases as the plants mature.

On the subject of black fly, they have just started arriving on my Spring sown beans, exactly the same day as last year. So it was off with their heads early this morning. One really doesn't want plants inundated with the blighters. Greenfly surprisingly attacked my broad beans at home in the garden two days ago and they've had the washing up liquid spray treatment initially.

[AnneB]

Glad to report that on close inspection my broad beans are now laden with pods.   Quite small pods at the moment, but pods nevertheless.

[bravemurphy]

Most of the lower flowers on mine are gone and no pods, have got some pods closer to the top setting.

[pigguns]

My Autumn sown Aquadulce are finished now and it was a brilliant crop, I nipped the tops early which meant I got harvest earlier than my neighbour who sowed at the same time.  All my Spring sown ones though seem to have way less beans coming on, same variety and ground, don't know if this is usual or just down to weather/insects/watering

[tosca100]

I fretted over my broad beans this year too as they didn't seem to be setting, but there are more than enough on there now.

I didn't worry too much about blackfly, I sacrificed a couple of plants at the end of two rows and let them get on with it. They left the rest alone