I see. Honey bees here and even the yellow jackets wont bother me. It's not because i'm some absurdly peaceful type like I was painting pictures on pbs they must have come to the conclusion I mean them no harm. I will yell at them(the yellow jackets) but the same way i yell at my dog. It's basically to say enough in an authoritative voice and to show no fear while doing so. Who really knows why they listen but they have this year. I think it's because I refuse to retreat or act like I'm up to no good. I spend a lot of time around dogs and they live by emotion. With insects I try to be emotionless. My dog hates bugs and will attack all flying ones. She never catches them though. My 1st dog going back 2 dogs used to snap hard and you could see a hole in the yellow jacket's body. You could literally whistle through it if you wanted not that I ever did.

I could agree and believe the OP as soon as I read it. A search for honey bee damage brought me to this forum. Two years ago my neighbor decided to become a bee keeper, and appears to be as commercial as he can get away with. I had harvested my fig tree for 8 yearsm but last year, the figs were totally destroyed by his bees. Before they were at the stage that I would pick them, they would have bees feeding off of them. The state of Florida has recently turned bee keepers into royalty by overriding any local concordances, and letting them pretty much do as they please. I tried many things last year, as I did not want to kill them. Next I will complain to the department of agriculture who supposedly regulates them, but I have had enough, and this year the pesticide will come out. If anyone knows of any groups that one could join to complain in Florida, or who wants to start one, please post up.

I just saw this today. Honey bees are congregating at the bottom of the plant in the soil. My neighbors have a hive. The first time I am seeing this. The plant sits in a mesh encasing the whole flower pot with the plant open on where the bees hang out. I have 2 other similar plants with the mesh enclosure. One above the bee one and the other on the other side of the porch but they only go to that one plant.

Amy, Poor little toad. Oh well, while unfortunate, it does happen. Those little generic plastic plant tags that indicate plant name, height, spread, etc. are the standard labels I was talking about. I buy bulk seed from a supplier that even supplies the tags if you want to buy them, so you can buy their seeds for, let's say, several kinds of marigolds and then buy and use the same little plastic tag for all the marigolds you raise if you're raising them for retail sales. The tags tend to be very generic, often just giving a general name like "Angelonia" with specifying which angelonia it is.....that's the most cost-effective way for them to tag things instead of having to buy separate tags for each type of any given flower. Sometimes, on newer named varieties that are higher-priced, they'll have the specific name on a tag like "Zinnia, Magella" or "Zinnia, Pinca" but often all they say is "Zinnia". I do buy plants from a couple of local organic nurseries in Texas that raise a lot of their own plants as organically as possible but they still don't label all their plants "organic" and I suspect that is because some of the things they buy from some wholesalers are not organic. Heather, I suspect it is virtually everything ornamental because that is just how large commercial growers operate. They use systemic pesticides so they can deliver "picture perfect" plants to the retailers who purchase stock from them. In one sense, I understand it. When a commercial grower is raising millions of bedding plants over a period of many months, they cannot afford any sort of pest or disease outbreak that will taint their stock so they rely on systemics. Understanding why it is done, however, does not make the process more acceptable to me. You might find local nurseries or small local wholesalers who produce their own plants organically and, if so, they should be labeled to indicate they are organically grown. I've found locally-grown organically-grown bedding plants and perennials at some farmer's markets. More and more, I just buy the seeds and raise my own. I'm getting pickier and pickier every year about what I'll plant on our property because anything I buy and bring in could have been sprayed with systemic products that I don't want on our property. With edible plants, there also are some systemic insecticides used to raise those seedlings that are sold in spring as transplants, so I find myself buying fewer and fewer of them as well. It has forced me to devote more time and effort to raising perennials and biennials from seed or from cuttings. I'm not going to say I'll never buy anything that was raised with the use of systemic chemicals, but just that I try to keep those sorts of plants to a minimum. It doesn't bother me as much to buy small shrubs or trees that likely have been treated with a systemic. I just cut off any flowers that form the first year those plants are in the ground, so there is less likelihood the local bees will be harmed by flowers from those plants. By the second year, the systemic pesticides should be out of the plants' systems. And, let us not forget, many of the groceries we buy from the grocery store (unless you are buying organic) have been treated with systemic pesticides, including systemic fungicides. It is very hard and takes a great deal of effort to garden and to eat in a clean manner. Dawn