Crop failure in gooseberry due to poor pollination

Some commercial plantations of gooseberry (Ribes uva-crispa L. cultivar ‘Careless’) recently carried poor crops of small fruit with few seeds. The flowers appeared normal and there was an effective pollination period of at least 11 days. Hand pollination resulted in a good set of normal fruits. Few pollinating insects were recorded on a typical affected site, but on trouble-free sites insects, particularly honey bees, were plentiful and effective in transferring pollen. On trouble-free sites, excluding pollinating insects by caging bushes resulted in a typical crop failure, but caging had little effect on the problem site. Introducing honey-bee colonies to the affected site increased fruit set and seed number by comparison with caged bushes.