For Our Beekeepers

[glatt]

Last night I made a carpenter bee trap.

We'll see how it works. The little shits are eating my house.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Here's a charm for beekeepers. Actually it's supposed to be a Hornet school mascot, but beekeepers are adaptable folk.

BMets mascot Buddy the Bee to be replaced.

[footfootfoot]

Awesome. I'm on it.

[glatt]

[Undertoad]

20,000 bees follow a car for two days trying to rescue their queen

Roger Burns, of Pembrokeshire Beekeepers, said: "It is possible the queen had been attracted to something in the car - perhaps a sweet or food in the car.

"The swarm of around 20,000 had followed her and were sat around on the boot of the car.

"I brought over a cardboard box and carefully brushed them into there as quickly as possible as I was aware it was a big swarm in the middle of the high street.

"I got about 15 or 20 stings for my trouble. I then left the cardboard box on the roof while we waited for the last few hundred bees to leave the boot but then a gust of wind blew it off and the queen may have fled back to the boot again."

Retired GP Roger, 65, said: "I then had to leave and another beekeeper took up the watch however eventually the car owner returned and drove off.

"I have been beekeeping for 30 years and I have never seen a swarm do that. It is natural for them to follow the queen but it is a strange thing to see and quite surprising to have a car followed for two days. It was quite amusing."

[captainhook455]

I once had a spider lay her eggs in one of my rose flowers. She tied the flower up with her eggs inside. The amazing thing was the other flowers died in winters chill, but this one stayed red and whole. February came and was time to cut the bushes to the ground. I left the one sprig uncut. Spring came. The little buggers hatched. They were red like the rose, soon to be green like dear old mom. After a few days I noticed a couple of yellow jackets were eating my babies. I dispatched them with fly spray. The time came for the brood to leave the nest and the rose flower finally died. None said goodbye or thanks for protecting them. I did notice that I didn't have to spray for white flies or Japanese beatles that summer. I think that was enough thanks for anyone.

tarheel

[Gravdigr]

Friendly neighborhood bees vs. asshole wasps...

[footfootfoot]

[xoxoxoBruce]

Bees are faster than pigeons.

[Happy Monkey]

If Attenborough is describing a horrific lifecycle, 90% chance he's describing a wasp.

[xoxoxoBruce]

A bumblebee is now on the endangered species list for the first time in a "race against extinction," the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday. The agency placed the rusty patched bumblebee on the list because of a dramatic population decline over the past 20 years. Since the late 1990s, the population of the species has plummeted 87%. Named because of the rust-colored marks on its back, the bee was once common and abundant across 28 states from Connecticut to South Dakota. Today, the bee is only found in small, scattered populations in 13 states...

It's not just the rusty patched bumblebee that is struggling in the U.S. Other species have experienced dramatic declines in recent decades. The reduction is believed to be caused by a combination of habitat loss, disease, pesticide use, climate change and an extremely small population size...

This is the first bee of any type in the continental U.S. to be placed on the list. In September, the Obama administration designated seven species of bees in Hawaii as endangered.

You've probably heard the bad news by now that bees were recently added to the endangered species list for the first time. But if you're part of the 60 percent of people who share stories without actually reading them, you might have missed an important detail: namely, that the newly endangered bees are a handful of relatively obscure species who live only in Hawaii.
The bees you're more familiar with — the ones that buzz around your yard dipping into flowers, making honey, pollinating crops and generally keeping the world's food supply from collapsing? Those bees are doing just fine, according to data released by the USDA this year...

The number of commercial bee colonies is still significantly higher than it was in 2006, when colony collapse disorder — the mass die-offs that began afflicting U.S. honeybee colonies — was first documented...
“Honey bees are not about to go extinct,” Kim Kaplan, a researcher with the USDA, said in an email. “It is the beekeepers who are in danger, facing unsustainable economic losses."

link

[Clodfobble]

Pertinent quote from the comments section of the WaPo article:

It's like saying thousands of people are dying, but it's fine, in 9 months they can make more. Bees are indicators of a healthy environment and even if commercial bee keepers can quickly replace dead honey bees it still means something is terribly wrong.

[Griff]

I have activity in both hives but I think I took a numbers hit.

[xoxoxoBruce]

It's like saying thousands of people are dying, but it's fine, in 9 months they can make more. Bees are indicators of a healthy environment and even if commercial bee keepers can quickly replace dead honey bees it still means something is terribly wrong.

That's not what I got from the article. My take is the bumblebee is the is first to make the endangered list, but a lot of lesser know bees are in deep shit too.
The honeybee is doing OK only because of intense intervention by man.

I've read a bunch of articles saying the problem's real cause is X or Y or Z. Likely it's a combination of a bunch of things, none of which anyone cares to tackle other than on a local small scale.

[orthodoc]

I've read enough to know that we're in trouble, but not enough to be confident about all of the science (meaning trends and population issues; the neonicotinoids are another matter). However - small local scale can make a difference, even turn the tide. I'm going to set up hives this spring.

I've watched the bat population on our property wax and wane over 10 years - there isn't much I can do to help them other than do no harm. For the bees, maybe a little positive intervention is possible.