# Where are all the Bee's



## Kodeman (Jul 25, 2013)

My assorted semi-dwarf fruit trees are in full bloom but I notice that there are hardly any bee's around. Last year, the same situation. I had an abundance of blossoms and ended up with very little fruit. I suspected it was a pollination problem but didn't know for sure. This year I made an effort to monitor the trees for bee's and believe that their scarcity may have begun last year. So frustrating!


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## Padre (Oct 7, 2011)

*We got bees*



Kodeman said:


> My assorted semi-dwarf fruit trees are in full bloom but I notice that there are hardly any bee's around. Last year, the same situation. I had an abundance of blossoms and ended up with very little fruit. I suspected it was a pollination problem but didn't know for sure. This year I made an effort to monitor the trees for bee's and believe that their scarcity may have begun last year. So frustrating!


I have heard about this problem but honestly can't say I have experienced it in my neck of the woods, we have a very vibrant ecosystem of plants and insects going and always have. Perhaps if you diversify the types of nectar available you will attract more bees? The other though is how about raising them for honey. This is a project that I have been meaning to try for a few years.

Can't honestly claim to be the farmer in the family though...


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## HardCider (Dec 13, 2013)

Just read an article about a commercial pollinator. He typically loses about 75%-85% of his hives every year. A lot of it is pesticides and lack of wildflowers(weeds to most). People with high end lawns hate dandelions but it's one of the first sources of pollen. A lot of it has to do with trachea mites infecting the bees. You can buy Mason bees for pollinating if you don't want to mess with honey and they are a little more hardy than honey bees.


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## Balls004 (Feb 28, 2015)

I've been purposely not cutting the large clover patches in our yard for the past few years to help out the bees. I also try not to bush hog until the last possible moment. We generally have a pretty fair amount of bees and I've seen about the normal amount this year. 

I try to limit the amount of pesticides in our yard, but I do have to spray, or we'll get sucked dry by ticks, so I try to do that well before stuff starts flowering.

I don't know if it's doing the right things, but at least I'm trying.


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## crabapple (Jan 1, 2012)

They like black cherry/ pin cherry blossom, which grows wild here & most of the Eastern USA.You can plant clover,buckwheat & let wild flowers bloom.
http://www.wikihow.com/Attract-Honey-Bees


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## Gians (Nov 8, 2012)

Got lots of Rosemary on a slope in the backyard, the bees love it. I like to let some of the garden plants, like arugula, get to the flowering stage for a while before pulling them out.


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## Kodeman (Jul 25, 2013)

Thanks to all that offered their advise. To the topic of raising my own bee's, I live in South Eastern Ma. and my neighbors land has many acre's of cranberry bogs out back. The bog owners rent bee hives to pollenate their cranberry plants every year, so they should be coming over to my property as they have always done. I do have an abundance of clover and dandelions in my yard, never use pesticides and only use organic fertilizer. Keeping fingers crossed.


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## VoorTrekker (Oct 7, 2012)

I've heard that the corporations who control big agro have used the DNA/GMO to such an advantage that the DNA kills the bees and prevents some wild plants from pollinating. The DNA/GMO may also kill the bees, as well as various pesticides and non pollinating super crops.


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## NaeKid (Oct 17, 2008)

I was working on the weekend in my backyard and I had a few very large bumblebees roaming around. Even had one land on my hand and take a rest .... :teehee:


I love seein' the bees floating around.


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## worldengineer (Sep 20, 2010)

I currently have 3 hives, 2 from houses and one from a swarm. I have so done 100% organic treatment and they have done well.

I am not a genius at bees but here is my observations. What I can tell you is that during early spring when some of the hardwood trees are blooming bees won't care for anything with a light nectar or pollen.

For instance in my area the bees will go for trees flowering vs that of clover. But when the trees stop then bees will migrate towards the light nectar producing plants, wildflowers, clover, honey suckles.

Also what could be happening is that either their are few bees in your area, or that their is a an abundance of better nutritional pollen around. Humans prefer light colored honeys bees prefer dark colored honeys which come from hardwood trees.

Just my opinion.


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

Lots of good points made here. It might be worth looking into attracting or acquiring alternative (to honey bees) pollinators in addition or instead of honey bees. Many native pollinators can do a great job assuming the right habitat.



worldengineer said:


> I currently have 3 hives, 2 from houses and one from a swarm. I have so done 100% organic treatment and they have done well.
> 
> I am not a genius at bees but here is my observations. What I can tell you is that during early spring when some of the hardwood trees are blooming bees won't care for anything with a light nectar or pollen.
> 
> ...


Solid observations imo, depending on your area. It is important to remember that honey bees need two main things; nectar and pollen. The two are completely separate as far as bees are concerned and the fact that they are collecting one from a particular species has no bearing on the other. Almost always, a bee will go out to collect pollen OR nectar on a trip and they choose what blooms to visit accordingly.

A good example is alfalfa, honey bees do not like to pollinate it at all because the flower bashes them on the head when they do however they love the nectar. As a result alfalfa leaf cutters do a much better job of pollinating them, but honey bees will do ok with heavy enough bees/acre.

Of course bees also need fresh water, propolis, and a place to live, but these are usually not a limiting factor (water can be though).

There are many plants like beebalm that they love, some for the pollen, some the nectar, and many for both.


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## Gians (Nov 8, 2012)

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-deba...-measuring-the-massive-cost-of-hive-collapse/

"The makers of insecticides containing neonics, Bayer and Syngenta chief among them, have a lot to lose if regulatory bodies end up siding with the environmentalists. More than 90 percent of the corn in the U.S. is treated with neonics, according to this release from Bayer. To put this in perspective, last year the USDA estimated that around 91.6 million acres of corn were planted in the United States. That's a lot of neonic'd corn.

So what happens if - or when - we run out of honey bees?

In addition to posing a huge risk to global food supply, there would be dire economic repercussions. Right now, the honey bee adds more than $15 billion to the U.S. economy alone, through its pollination of fruits, vegetables and other crops, according to a 2014 report from the White House. Worldwide, that number is around $365 billion per year.

And it's not just traditional farmers who would suffer. The honey bee industry in the U.S. pulls in more than $300 million in revenue a year, according to a December 2014 IbisWorld report. But as the bees die, some fear the industry will go with them. The American Beekeeping Federation told the Wall Street Journal that its membership has been massively depleted over the past 20 years.

The solution to a lack of honey bees might just be&#8230; different bees. At least that's according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison study, which showed that attracting wild bees (in this case, by planting wildflowers at the edge of a crop) could aid in crop pollination - up to 50 percent of it, at least."


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## LilRedHen (Aug 28, 2011)

The last few years the bees have been dwindling fast around here and last year I didn't see any honey bees. About a mile away, land was sold and instead of hay, the new owner has no tilled soybeans for the last 3 seasons. Along the road to town, fields have been sprayed in preparation for planting corn and soybeans. Sometimes I wonder if the rage for no till is a contributing factor on the lack of honey bees.


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## VoorTrekker (Oct 7, 2012)

No till is another method of farming. Similar to the alternatives, bio-intensive, no till mulching, etc. 
The planting method is not the factor, it is the insecticides and the loss of habitat. The herbicides and fungicides also contribute to the negative effects on the environment.


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## Starcreek (Feb 4, 2015)

Kodeman said:


> My assorted semi-dwarf fruit trees are in full bloom but I notice that there are hardly any bee's around. Last year, the same situation. I had an abundance of blossoms and ended up with very little fruit. I suspected it was a pollination problem but didn't know for sure. This year I made an effort to monitor the trees for bee's and believe that their scarcity may have begun last year. So frustrating!


There are about 12,000 of them in my yard! Concerned about pollination for my garden, I set up a top-bar hive and just today installed my first package of honeybees. Wish me luck!


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## Starcreek (Feb 4, 2015)

LilRedHen said:


> The last few years the bees have been dwindling fast around here and last year I didn't see any honey bees. About a mile away, land was sold and instead of hay, the new owner has no tilled soybeans for the last 3 seasons. Along the road to town, fields have been sprayed in preparation for planting corn and soybeans. Sometimes I wonder if the rage for no till is a contributing factor on the lack of honey bees.


The no-till fields are almost exclusively genetically modified corn, soy, and cotton. GMO crops get a heck of a lot of chemicals sprayed on them. Besides that, the World Health Organization recently said that one of the substances present in GM corn is a "likely carcinogen in humans."

This past winter we drove past a large (50-100 acre) field of harvested corn. There were whole ears of corn lying scattered all over the field, left behind by the harvester. If raccoons and deer won't eat it, what makes anyone think it's healthy for human consumption?


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

VoorTrekker said:


> No till is another method of farming. Similar to the alternatives, bio-intensive, no till mulching, etc.
> The planting method is not the factor, it is the insecticides and the loss of habitat. The herbicides and fungicides also contribute to the negative effects on the environment.


As a farmer, I have to chime in here. While no-till is "another method of farming", that doesn't remove it from being a factor.

"Conventional" tillage farming allows killing weeds and summer fallow through tillage as well as other means whereas no-till agriculture almost exclusively relies on chemicals. While it may be true that there are other ways of dealing with weeds in a no-till system, the fact of the matter is that simply is not happening on a commercial scale. In our area, farmers with tillage would and do typically make one chemical application per year, with no-till the average is 3.

So, while no-till might theoretically not necessarily result in more chemicals, the real world has shown otherwise thus far.


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## RevWC (Mar 28, 2011)

Gians said:


> http://blogs.reuters.com/great-deba...-measuring-the-massive-cost-of-hive-collapse/
> 
> "The makers of insecticides containing neonics, Bayer and Syngenta chief among them, have a lot to lose if regulatory bodies end up siding with the environmentalists. More than 90 percent of the corn in the U.S. is treated with neonics, according to this release from Bayer. To put this in perspective, last year the USDA estimated that around 91.6 million acres of corn were planted in the United States. That's a lot of neonic'd corn.
> 
> ...


The Birds & The Bees: Suicide By Pesticide

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-25/birds-bees-suicide-pesticide



> Biocide = Suicide
> 
> Actually, it's not really proper to call neonicotinoids 'pesticides' because they don't solely target pests. They should more accurately be called 'biocides' because they kill all insects equally and indiscriminately.
> 
> ...


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## VoorTrekker (Oct 7, 2012)

cowboyhermit said:


> As a farmer, I have to chime in here. While no-till is "another method of farming", that doesn't remove it from being a factor.
> 
> "Conventional" tillage farming allows killing weeds and summer fallow through tillage as well as other means whereas no-till agriculture almost exclusively relies on chemicals. While it may be true that there are other ways of dealing with weeds in a no-till system, the fact of the matter is that simply is not happening on a commercial scale. In our area, farmers with tillage would and do typically make one chemical application per year, with no-till the average is 3.
> 
> So, while no-till might theoretically not necessarily result in more chemicals, the real world has shown otherwise thus far.


No till was being used all the way back to before the Great Depression. The old woman who wrote a book about it said she used mulching and never used chemicals.

Where do people get these chemical applications nonsense? If you are talking about corporate commercial farming, of course they wouldn't mulch or use composte. There is something else going on with planting if a corporate farm is not tilling.


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

VoorTrekker said:


> No till was being used all the way back to before the Great Depression. The old woman who wrote a book about it said she used mulching and never used chemicals.
> 
> Where do people get these chemical applications nonsense? If you are talking about corporate commercial farming, of course they wouldn't mulch or use composte. There is something else going on with planting if a corporate farm is not tilling.


LilRedHen mentioned no-till farming, specifically;


> Sometimes I wonder if the rage for no till is a contributing factor on the lack of honey bees.


To which you responded that the planting method was not a factor, I simply explained how it indeed is a factor right now in the real world. Perhaps LilRedHen was talking about gardening or something other than commercial agriculture, but I believe that is exactly what they were referring to.

Whether or not a farm is a corporation or not makes no difference in this situation. Nowhere did I say that "no-till" farming has not existed for a long time, I simply pointed out the fact that right here and now there is a strong causation relationship between it and chemical use.

As for "Where do people get these chemical applications nonsense?", it is what is happening, right now, in a field near you. Whether you call it nonsense or not.


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## VoorTrekker (Oct 7, 2012)

I think we all agree that the plight of the bees is the application of chemicals. 
Organic farming would not have this negative affect on bees, but the chemical industry is not going to promote organic farming. They are attempting to limit organic, which is why people go to jail for selling raw milk and "unpasteurized" tomatoes.


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## Kodeman (Jul 25, 2013)

I enjoy how this op has morphed into an enlightened discussion on the plight of our bee population. If anyone is interested I'll provide an update:

My fruit trees seeming have successfully been pollinated to varying degrees. Most varieties have a fair amount of young fruit, although the pear trees are lagging behind the other varieties. All in all it was much better than last year.

Cowboyhermit, I took your suggestion and planted Beebalm this morning.


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## crabapple (Jan 1, 2012)

There are two beekeepers here in S.C, that are doing well with bees & have more honey then they can sale.
So some of the hive are doing well in this world of spray now & worry later.


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