The tomatoes grown under greenhouse conditions require supplemental bee pollination for the better
fruit set. The present study was conducted to evaluate the optimized role of bumblebees (Bombus
terrestris L.) for tomato pollination under greenhouse conditions. The impact of increasing number of floral
visits (i.e. 1 to 5) on physical and biochemical properties of tomato was studied on tomato variety
‘Grande’ grown on an area of 500 m2. The self-pollination and hand vibration treatments were
maintained for the comparison. The foraging behavior in terms of colony traffic, stay time and visitation
rate was also studied. The maximum average outgoing bumblebees (7.38 individuals) were recorded at
10:00 while the maximum average incoming (6.75) were recorded at 2:00 pm. The three visits of bumblebees
on a single flower resulted in the maximum improvement in physical (higher fruit length, fruit
weight, fruit weight, number of seeds per fruit, weight of 100 seeds) and biochemical properties (vitamin
C, shelf life) as compared to hand vibration and self-pollination treatments. There was no improvement in
physical and biochemical properties in fourth or fifth visit. Bumble bee pollinated fruits had low TSS, pH
and postharvest weight loss than that of self-pollinated and hand vibrated treatments. Therefore, three
visits of bumblebees per flower are enough to get the optimum production of tomato under greenhouse
conditions.