In comparison with other pollinating insects like honeybees, bumblebees are very effective pollinators. They are first of all fast workers (for instance, they visit twice as many flowers per minute as honeybees), and because of their size, they can carry relatively heavy loads, which enables them to make long foraging trips. Also due to their relatively large size they often achieve better contact with stamens and pistils than smaller insects.
Furthermore, bumblebees make relatively few demands on the circumstances under which they work. They feel more at ease in greenhouses/tunnels than honeybees for instance, particularly where restricted areas are concerned. Bumblebees are still active at relatively low temperatures (around 10°C) and low light intensity levels. Even strong wind and drizzle will not keep them from doing their job.
In 1987 it became known that bumblebees could be an excellent alternative for the fruitset of tomatoes. This was a very labour-intensive job. At that very moment Koppert started producing bumblebees: Bombus terrestris for Europe and Asia, B. impatiens for North and South America. Meanwhile bumblebees are used world-wide for the pollination of tomato crops. Resulting in enormous savings in labour costs, improvements of fruit quality and sometimes even increased production.
One important advantage of bumblebees over honeybees is the absence of a communication system. Honeybees inform each other by means of the so-called bees' dance of the presence of an attractive food source outside the crop in which their pollination activities are required, as a result of which the bees may leave collectively. Bumblebees do not have such a communication system. Should an individual bumblebee find an attractive food source elsewhere, it cannot inform its companions, so that the other bumblebees will continue to work in the crop in which their services are required.
Another advantage of bumblebees over honeybees, which manifests itself particularly in fruit crops, is the fact that they are not so much tied to a specific area in the crop. They change trees more often and more easily than honeybees. This benefits the cross-pollination which is often required in fruit (especially when it depends on pollen of special "pollinator trees").