Steven, I'm concerned about the Bees too. I saw about half a dozen Honey Bees when the Crocus were blooming and that was all. One Bumblebee in the greenhouse today, but there are no Bees in my Pear tree which is in full bloom. Do you think the cold wet weather has done them in? I just hope there are a few Mason Bees around to help out with pollination.

A......

I've had many bees visit my garden within the last month.
You and I live on opposite coasts with different weather patterns/climates and such, which could have something to do with it, I suppose.

Maybe the lack of bees in your particular area has something to do with what's currently blooming?

I had so many bees last year that they became a bit of a nuisance...had to wait til certain times of the day to tend my plants, otherwise the bees would chase me away from "their" flowers.

Try not to worry...I'm sure they'll be around to visit you soon enough.

Renee

In my backyard....

You probably saw the post about a bee swarm in my backyard.

I think the late cold spell we had around Easter was very hard on the bees. And I'm thrilled to see this swarm house hunting in my area. I'm not thrilled by the responses from the bee folks I called. They all sound like exterminators. Gotta make more calls....

Shall I box this swarm up and send it to you, Steven???? :0) Your mailperson would love that!

I've only seen one wasp here in my Nebraska garden. It's early yet for us though. In March we had temps in the 80's and then a couple weeks of freezing weather again. That really knocked the boxelder bugs on their rear ends (gee am I ever sorry to see that...NOT!). Everything else seems to be showing up, ants, flies etc. so I'm sure the bees aren't far behind. Odd for your warm climate though.

MeMo

They're down here, Steven, on my deck swarming all my new purchases. The bumblebees were a bit late this year but now they are back to their old dive bombing tricks whenever we walk outside. They're giving my cats fits because they're so hard to catch. ; )

I think there is still a problem with the honey bees in some parts of the country. The last I heard it was thought that cell towers could be the culprit. Scary, huh?

Diana

Here's a link to an article about a fungus that might be the culprit.

Diana

Here is a link that might be useful: bees and fungus

They haven't missed a beat in my neighborhood - Southern California.

Anne

Steven , they seem to be in evidence here in my garden. I have them all over the Borage, and the Geraniom biokovo in particular. Many of thier other faves are not blooming yet-I'll suggest they visit down your way !
Kathy in Napa

I noticed them in the blooming ligustrums today. They used to be a problem on my hummer feeders until I changed styles.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:650521}}

The bee's are back in my garden. The crimson clover helped. They're loving the poppies, cosmos, honeywort and honeysuckle at the moment. The Carpenter bee is loving the sweetpeas.

I learned from the entomologist, who spoke at Annie's, the honey bee is suffering from CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder). They are not a native bee to the US. Some say they come from Asia, some say they come from Europe. It's still a mystery as to what is causing the decline.

I've seen at least 5 native bee's in my garden including the Mason, Carpenter and Bumble.

I built a Mason bee house. I really hope they use it. They are timid and shy little creatures. They look like a fly.

Edna

I've got lots of bees this year now that I've actually got flowers. I even had a Bumble bee show up today. When I moved here (Lompoc, CA) last year, I found out the town bills itself as the "Flower Capital of the World." The place is surrounded by fields of flowers grown for commercial venture-- so different than the crops I grew up with in the Central Valley.

Last week someone told me that the farmers never used to keep bee hives-- that they used the wind to do the pollinating. I can kind of see how it could be made to work in a reliable way, as the little valley we're in is a straight shot from the ocean, with mountains on both the north and south sides, causing the wind to always flow in one direction. Weird concept, but very cool to think about. At least the wind which comes up every day from around noon until dark has a purpose. ;-)

Nancy

Steven,

The bees are not here in my garden and I have a lot of things blooming. Lots of bumblebees and wasps but very, very few honeybees. It's very disturbing.

bloominganne

This article was emailed to me earlier this month, and it brings up some very good points. The first paragraph alone, is chilling.

Honey Bees and Food Supply
By Shannara Johnson

"If the bee disappears off the surface of the globe, then man would have four years left to live," said Albert Einstein. "No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

The question many beekeepers and scientists are asking themselves these days is, are we there already?

Recently, there's been a great media buzz about the mysterious disappearance of hundreds of millions of honey bees in the United States. Beekeepers have helplessly stood by while up to 95% of their bees vanished into thin air. One Midwestern beekeeper lost 11,000 of his 13,000 hives, others in 24 states face losses of 60% to 80% on average. Internationally, the same phenomenon--to a lesser degree--has surfaced in Canada, Poland, Spain, Germany, and other European countries.

What's the cause of the "colony collapse syndrome," as it is now called? No one knows for sure, though there are plenty of theories.

Award-winning TV producer, investigative reporter and editor of Earthfiles.com Linda Moulton-Howe talked to various scientists about the bee bane. "Penn State entomologist Diana Cox-Foster, Ph.D., analyzed some bees found in deserted hives," reports Moulton-Howe. "Dr. Cox-Foster has seen as many as five different viruses and unidentified fungi in the bees. She says that is two times more pathogens than she's ever seen before in honey bees."

Something is compromising the bees' immune systems, other scientists agree; among the suspected culprits are modern pesticides and GM crops. And while no one agent might be solely responsible for the bees' disease, Moulton-Howe wonders "what happens when farmers spray herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and rodenticides on land that has also genetically modified crops with pesticides built in?"

As an example, Monsanto's "Round-up Ready" crops, which are modified to withstand the spraying of herbicides, are widely used in the U.S. Recently, though, weeds have developed a Round-up resistance--resulting in frustrated farmers spraying more and more of the weed killer, in combination with others, on their fields.

Eric Mussen, an entomologist and Extension Apiculturist at UC-Davis, also found that some fungicides approved by the EPA for bee safety, while not killing adult bees, are fatal for bee larvae and young bees.

How did the EPA react to his warnings?

"Well, they said they wanted to see some evidence or some data," Mussen told Earthfiles.com. "So, I sent them the evidence. And I cannot see that anything has changed since then and that was a couple of years ago."

Another hypothesis is that nicotine-based pesticides, which have emerged in the last six years, might be messing with the memory of the honey bees, rendering them incapable of finding their way back to the hive.

"The interesting thing [...] is that bees are leaving the colony and not coming back," states Jerry Hayes, chief of the Apiary section at Florida's Department of Agriculture, "which is highly unusual for a social insect to leave a queen and its brood or young behind. They are seemingly going out and can't find their way back home.

"Imidachloprid [the most common nicotine-based pesticide], when it is used to control termites, does exactly the same thing. One of the methods it uses to kill termites is that the termites feed on this material and then go out to feed and can't remember how to get home."

It also causes their immune systems to collapse, says Hayes, adding that imidachloprid has recently evolved from a mere seed treatment to a foliage spray, often combined with fungicides to increase its efficacy.

Mounting stress for the bees might be another factor, suggested a February 23 article in the New York Times. There are fewer and fewer beekeepers in the U.S., who are trucking their hives on 18-wheelers around the country to serve increasing demand from their customers.

"Bees are being raised to survive a shorter off-season, to be ready to pollinate once the almond bloom begins in February. This has most likely lowered their immunity to viruses."

But it's not just viruses. Mites are also a big problem, "and the insecticides used to try to kill mites are harming the ability of queen bees to spawn as many worker bees. The queens are living half as long as they did just a few years ago."

But how dire is our situation due to the loss of honey bees?

Honey bees pollinate fruit and nut trees, melons and vegetables in the U.S., a $14.5 billion industry. A 2006 study by an international research team found that pollinators affect more than one-third of the world's crop production, increasing the output of 87 of the leading food crops worldwide.

"Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honey bee to pollinate that food," according to Zac Browning, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation. And Paul Wenger, VP of the California Farm Bureau Federation, said that with fewer bees, "you'll see lower pollination, lower yields, lower crop production."

So, could we face a national food crisis soon?

It's possible, says Jerry Hayes, wondering if honey bees are the canary in the coal mine. "What are honey bees trying to tell us that we humans should be paying more attention to?"

He thinks having to import more food could be a dilemma in itself: "How much of our food production do we want to turn over to other countries that might be friendly now and not friendly in the future? [...] Then the question is: who fills the gap? And do we become reliant on them? I think I read a figure from the USDA that they project by 2015 that 40% of our vegetables would be coming from China."

Given the, to say it mildly, less-than-perfect environmental track record of the Chinese, we wonder what agents our veggies may be laced with in the future. (Case in point: according to ABC News, it is now suspected that the recent pet food poisoning, which caused renal failure in hundreds of cats, may have been caused by melamine, a toxic fertilizer component found in wheat gluten from China that went into U.S. pet food.)

And as to Hayes' question what honey bees are trying to tell us, it seems pretty clear to us: in the long run, you can't mess around with Mother Nature without facing the consequences

Could this be a cause of the Bees disappearing?

A......

Here is a link that might be useful: Bees and Cell Phones ?

Our lavender is completely covered in blooms and it seems an equal number of real honeybees. Someone will have lavender honey!

Cameron

Right. If people could put their cell phones down it might help.

Colony Collapse Disorder (or CCD) also referred as VBS (Vanishing Bee Syndrome) is still a mystery to entomologists and scientists.

It's been blamed on the Varroa mites (aka "Vampire Mite"), though this has never ultimately been confirmed.

As long as we have our native bee's, our gardens and orchards should fair well.

As I said in the above post, honey bee's are not native to the US.

It has been said that our native bee habitat has declined. That could pose a serious problem. Mulching gardens, use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has a detrimental effect on our native bees.

From the research I have done, California alone has over 1300 species of native beeÂs. Some states have even more so.

I have learned a great deal from the folks at the bee forum. A well worth visit over there.


Carpenter bee on sweetpea
{{gwi:425655}}

Edna

I heard on Paul Harvey about the bees and cell phones.
I have seen a few bees this spring, and even 1 honey
bee.

mary
z 5b ks

The more I read about Colony Collapse Disorder (whatever that is exactly), the more concerned I become. I am heartened to hear that many of you have a lot of the little buzzers around, but it sure is eerie for those of us who aren't seeing them at all. Definitely bears watching.

Edna - why is mulching a negative for bees?

Lots of bees here. All winter long even, when the sun's out. This year the giant bumblebees are very noticeable, especially the queens looking for holes to make their nests.

Since I have a gardenful of vole holes( and bouquets of tulips inside to prove it), I'm expecting lots of bumbles this summer.

... Don

We don't need to worry about sweet peas and bees, however. The flowers are self-pollinating.

Still, I am concerned about bees in general. What strikes the Italian honeybee could "morph" and start harming native bees as well. We are not takng care of the earth like we should be, in many ways.

Majority of our native bee's are solitary and do not travel in swarms. They nest in the ground digging a single hole and lay an egg. By mulching it disturbs their nests. The ones that visit our gardens for pollen usually lay eggs close by.

The Mason's and Carpenter bee's use wood.

Ed-

Yesterday we finally had what I would say was a warm spring, looking out the kitchen window I could see a lot of movement over the Euphorbias, I thought Honey Bee's, so ran out to take a look. Wrong, the whole patch was alive with Wasps, still no Honey Bees around here. The Orchard Mason Bees are doing their thing though, their little houses are almost full.

A......

Midnight, you raise Mason Bee's? Please tell me more. I just built a home with 30 holes drilled in a 4 x 6 redwood block. No action yet.

May garden is full of bee's now. I've counted around 8 species. The hoover flies are back also, I love those little guys.

Edna

Yes we're building a little subdivision, or maybe it will be a row of townhouses for these super little pollinators. DH started out by drilling holes in some old cedar fence posts and hung these up, cedar is not the best wood for these houses apparently, cedar unless it is very old is an insect repellant . DH found this info on the internet yesterday on how to make the houses and the tubes inexpensively. Here's a link to a document, it might show up on your desktop. I believe these guys are around till the end of may. It's fun to watch these little guys fill the holes up. Google Orchard Mason Bee's loads of info there.

A......

One or two native bees here, carpenter bees - but carpenter bees do not necessarily act as honey bees do.
Part of the problem is that few people raised native bees. At one time Italian and other bees were introduced to the USA with no thought to the fact that they may have preditors here. They do.
We are thinking of raising native bees - hoping that bringing the native bee colony back stronger will help make the native bee colonies predominant again.

GGG

GGG, that's a great idea! The sweat bee, leaf-cutting bee, squash bees, the mason bee and bumble bees are native to your neck of the woods.

My carpenter bee's like the sweetpeas, morning glory and honesuckle.

The leaf-cutters are liking the roses, dasies and cosmos.

My black bumbles go nuts over the honeywort.

The leaf cutter bee also uses the houses made for the mason bee, they seem to get along really well. I'm doing my best to stay away from pesticides, up here many of them have been banned and it's about time. Unfortunately I think they have done more harm than good.

A......

*LOL* leaf-cutters can do some amazing pattern cuts on leaves. They seem to have taken a fancy to my red bud and one rose bush.

It's good to know that they might take to my nest block.

I'd like to try and make a nest for carpenter bees but I haven't a clue how to. I've done google searches and came up with nothing.

Edna