Hand crossing beans

[flowerbug]

this shows one version of doing this reasonably well and between the video, description and the comments i think i might be able to do it without seeing closeup pictures. still i'd like to see closeup pictures eventually. i like magnified pictures.

as a bonus track i'll put this here because it is cute and interesting

 

[heirloomgal]

Wow, that 2nd video is pretty neat! I had no idea there was such a thing as 'buzz' pollination! As a seed saver this gives a new understanding to 'self pollinating'! Thanks for posting this!

 

[flowerbug]

with enough flowers coming out on various plants i've been able to contemplate and even attempt a few hand pollinations. unfortunately i can't see close enough any more and will need better ways of seeing to do these more accurately than just guessing i'm getting things in the right area at the right time.

in more research there have been a few tips found for knowing if a cross has taken or not and that is that a self pollination will usually give a full pod of seeds while a hand cross may not have the full pod. also roughly 25% of hand crosses will succeed (in combination with the other factors involved) so you may need to do 10-20 hand crosses to get enough to take. to make things easier on yourself remove any nearby flower buds to make it be one pod per node that you've hand pollinated and tag it with the male parent if you are doing more than one cross on that plant.