Abstract:
Agroecosystems attract numerous insect species for nesting, breeding and especially for pollination
function. While studies have been done in other nations about the ecological factors that determine fruit
set in passion crop, there is little work so far carried out in Kenya over the same. Apparently, in Kenya, no
effort has been made to study the ecology of carpenter bee and its effectiveness in passion fruit set. The
study involved small-scale purple passion fruit farmers in Mua hills in Machakos County, Kenya). These
small-scale farmers carry out production on farms measuring 0.20ha to 3.00ha. However, due to high
returns of purple passion fruit farming, farms with an average size of 0.10acres (0.04ha) were considered.
Therefore, the study covered farmers with 0.04 to 1.00ha of their farm under purple passion fruit. This
research aimed at solving the environmental problems of pollination limitation of passion fruit crop by
using ecological principles to establish the effect of land use on the ecology of the crop and that of the
carpenter bee.
