LOL. And lately the peer-reviewed scientific community actually thought they had a handle on colony collapse disorder through Iridovirus and Microsporidian infections. (See below.)

Little did science know it was really a secret political conspiracy perpetrated by EPA evildoers hiding behind grassy knolls.

Here is a link that might be useful: Honeybee Colony Decline

I hate to say it, but I'm kind of skeptical of that article, or Wiki-leak, Diane. Maxmex posted an article in the New York Times back in October this year. U.S. Army Scientists together with entomologists, many if them from the University of Montana, discovered a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and virus that was attributable to the death of honeybees. They did this by mashing dead honeybees, or I guess you could say they pureed them with mortar and pestle and coffee grinders (I will never look at these kitchen tools the same), and studied the resulting mishmash. They still don't know how the fungus/virus actually kills the honeybees, whether it is neurologic causing the bees to "lose their way", unable to find their way back to the hive, wandering endlessly until they die, or if the fungus/virus just outright kills them. It could be something that occurs in conjunction with the fungal pesticide, too, discussed in your attachment. There is still much to be done, but at least they have some insight now and are forging a path to really finding out what causes it.

It does disturb me a bit that in the article you posted, they are suggesting it can be fought off with what? Yet another chemical agent.

I attached the previous thread if you want to look at it.

Susan

Here is a link that might be useful: Maxmex Thread

Thanks for the link, Susan. I'll read it in a few days when I'm feeling better.

We're all down with a nasty bug and I don't yet have enough strength to form an opinion of my own. I just wanted to post the link before I lost it. :-)

Diane

We may all need a bee costume so we can polinate our own gardens, if the bees keep dying. I see a few honeybees, but mostly I see bumblebees in my garden.

I dont know how many bees you should have, but I seem to have plenty, maybe because my dog is allergic to bee stings and when I see one I think "Vet Bills". I may plant buckwheat in the south garden and see if that draws any away from the house area. I have a lot of clover and I think that helps draw the bees to the lawn area.

I dont think we will ever know the full facts about the bee die-off. If it is from natural causes it surly has happened many times in the past, if it is caused by man then maybe man or evoution can fix it.

I dont want to get in a bee costume and polinate my crops, I dont think the plants will hold me up. With the bees gone I am afraid the tumble bugs might polinate my veggies and I dont think I would like the taste.

Larry

Larry, try planting some Cosmic Orange Cosmos, seeds are cheap or I have some if you want. The honeybees just love the stuff and it blooms from late spring until frost.

I can just see us in our honeybee-wear with pollinating brushes in hand, dancing thru the flowers, Carol! LOL We just need a boom box with "Flight of the bumblebee" for our background music.

Having tons of honeybees this summer, I was wondering if there really was a crisis after all. I even came inside a couple of times with them clinging to my hair, that's how thick they were in the Cosmos I had to walk thru to get to the front door.

Susan

Susan, I always have oodles of bees and other pollinators here and have so many that some of my friends won't step foot in the garden because they're afraid of "all those bees". I do grow tons of flowers for them (including many kinds of comos) and try to have flowers and herbs they like in bloom every month of the year.

The bees and other pollinators are here 12 months out of the year (although their numbers are somewhat lower than usual in Dec., Jan, and Feb.), and I feed them with a hummingbird feeder in the winter. Sometimes I see them on the ground around the chicken's hen scratch, although I'm not sure what they are doing there. They stay there a long time though. I think in the coldest weather they must be staying warm by getting inside the chicken coops, garage/barn, or sunporch. Then, on warm days they come out and enjoy the weather and eat.

I think that people who maintain a landscape with little or no pesticide use will always have the pollinators around that they need as long as they also have flowers to attract them. It also to helps to have plants available 12 months out of the year so the bees can find some nectar. I have Laura Bush petunias and brugs in pots for them at this time of year, and tomato plants and peppers in pots, although their flowering has pretty much stopped during the last week or two due to cold nights.

It is 76 degrees here right now and the bees and ladybugs are all over the place outside. They must find good enough cover to keep them warm enough to survive the winter. At this time of year, even the presence of a few bees and lady bug beetles makes it seem like it isn't really winter. I guess all that will change when the cold front roars through on Thursday or Friday.

It is such an odd weather week. Two mornings ago, our low dipped to 14 degrees. Today our high so far is 76 (it was forecast to go to 72) and in another couple of days, our overnight low will be around 20. We seem to be on an endless roller coaster.

The bees always love the cosmos here among many other plants, but their all-time favorites seem to be the catnip and catmint.

People who use a lot of pesticides and live just a half-mile or mile from me insist they "never" have any bees, but refuse to accept my explanation that the pesticides they use are either killing the bees or causing them to leave and go elsewhere in order to survive. Last year, when we had bees heavy on the fruit trees, one of my neighbors told me it was the first year he'd seen a heavy bee presence at his place in years, but he often sprays pesticides, so that wasn't really a surprise.

I have always believed pesticides are playing a role in Colony Collapse Disorder although there may be other contributing factors. The last big bee die-off we had here in southern OK was attributed to the varroa mites, but the population seemed to rebound pretty quickly.

Let's not forget that a lot of the bee colonies that are dying are commercial hives that are transported all around the country to pollinate commercial crops when they are blooming. A lot of those bees are very stressed by the travel and by the manmade food they're given while traveling, and I think that makes them even more vulnerable to environmental stressors like pesticides.

Dawn

I've always had a certain number of honeybees, but never as many as I did this summer. They were just everywhere. I wonder if there was a hive closer to me this year or something. I always have tons of bumblebees. They really increase in number when the Cassia hebecarpa (Wild Senna), which is a native plant, blooms. After it, the Senna bicapsularis blooms, and they are swarming the flowers on it. Then when those lose their blooms, the Cosmos comes into play. Of course, they all love the milkweed blooms, the basil the asters and mistflowers, Salvias, Maximilian sunflower, the white clover, Trifolium repens. The Cassias really invite them in and the Cosmos begs them to stay.

I used to be extremely frightened of bees, but I overcame that fear when I realized they were no threat to me, they just wanted the pollen. Now, wasps are a different story.

Susan

Susan, I know I saw more bees this year than usual, but attributed it to the bountiful blossoms on all the fruit trees.

We have wild cassia and about a million other native plants growing here that all the pollinators love. That's how I have something in bloom for them year-round. I have noted what blooms in each month, and if there wasn't enough of the native ones around, I either gathered wild seed and spread it around more, or bought seed to supplement what is naturally occurring here.

Today I was out mowing up leaves to use in the garden, and we had red wasps out and about. Of course, it was 77 degrees at the time, so they were happy. They're less likely to be happy tomorrow, and I suspect they'll be back in hiding on Friday.

While mowing up the leaves, I noticed all kinds of cool-season weeds, many of which will begin blooming as early as January for the bees and other wild things have sprouted although most are pretty tiny and low to the ground still. So, I turned on the soaker hoses and sprinkler and watered them, hoping that having moist roots will keep them from being damaged if any ice or other stuff falls here Friday evening. Y'all probably have a better chance of seeing that stuff up there than we do down here, but you never know.

Dawn

So it isn't cell phone signals after all? We don't use pesticides and we do have a ton of stuff blooming most of the year. In fact, right now there are a half dozen blooms on a white hellebore which attracted bees 2 years ago at this time, but so far haven't seen any this year. (That may be weather related; we haven't had a 70 degreee day in a while and as I reacall it was on a quite warm day 2 years ago that I saw them.) Last spring we did have a few honeybees on the fruit trees but nowhere near as many as in earlier years. This past year a neighbor of my Dad had enough honey to sell 20 miles from me so know they are still working fairly close.

Is it wise to try to feed bees in the winter, and if so how should a person do it? I have thought about forming a piece of sheet iron in an inverted "U" shape and painting it black to absorb more heet and placing a cake pan or pie plate under the iron to hold something for them to eat and hanging it along my south fence.

I would like some ideas, pros and cons. Thanks Larry

Thought about getting a hive for my yard to keep the neighbors at bay. Are they hard to take care of? I have lots of bee and wasp in the yard and never have a problem getting along with them. That is until the figs get ripe and then you take your chances at the fig tree.

George (macmex) is a beekeeping. I am sure he will have some info when he reads this thread.

Larry, I have no idea if it is wise or not, but I do it anyway. I am a sucker for any living creatures that might be hungry in winter.

We put out deer corn and other grains for the deer all winter long, and have a regular resident herd who lives back deep in the woods and comes up here close to the house to eat. If I am late putting out the food, they stand on the edge of the woods and "scream" and holler for me to come put out the food. If we are gone and return home after dark, the deer are standing in the pasture near the feeding area, but on the other side of the fence in the neighbor's pasture, waiting for us to get home and feed them. Sometimes when we are gone, they come and look in the windows, and we know this because they leave their tracks in the ground outside the windows.

I also put out little piles of henscratch and sunflower seeds for the ground-feeding wild birds and rabbits, and keep various bird feeders full year-round.

The bird feeders don't get a lot of visitors (except for possums and raccoons) during the summer months, but the birds still spend hours a day hanging out in the bird feeder areas (near the gardens!) eating bugs. Even turtles and other small animals come and eat bird seed that falls from the feeders and eat at the small piles of bird seed that I put out alongside the driveway for the rabbits. We also have all kinds of berry-bearing plants like purple winter creeper and possumhaw holly that provide the wild things with berries for many weeks in winter and early spring.

I noticed years ago that bees would come to a hummingbird feeder in winter if I put out fresh food in it pretty regularly. (I have to remember to bring them inside or empty them out during freezing weather so they don't freeze and crack.) When there's nothing in the feeders, the bees spend a lot of time on the ground at the piles of cracked corn and hen scratch that I put out for the wild birds and rabbits. I don't know if they are eating the corn and other grains or what, but they'll stay there for hours.

We always have tons and tons of bees, even when our nearest gardening neighbors are telling me they have none, and I don't know if that is related to us having something for them to eat, or if our property just offers them good housing options.

On warmer days earlier this week, I saw bees, flies, lady bugs and wasps flying all over the place while I was outside using the mower/grass catcher to chop up leaves and collect them to use as mulch. I even came across a few grasshoppers, but I wasn't happy to see them. It probably helps that I still have about a dozen flowering plants in containers for them: Laura Bush petunias (cold hardy for me down to about 8-10 degrees), brugmansias, edible and ornamental pepper plants and two tomato plants. All the plants get visited daily pretty much as soon as I open the garage doors and bring them out into the sunshine. Despite cold nights, the tomato plants had new blooms on Thursday and I 'thumped' them with my fingers to encourage fertilization.

I am sure the bees must have their own food stored away for winter, but they sure do come out and forage for whatever they can find or warmer winter days. Our last fall-blooming wildflowers usually finish up in November and the earliest winter ones don't start blooming until mid- to late-January, so I suppose the bees are looking for something to help keep them going through that time when there's nothing native in bloom.

We have henbit in the yard that sprouted early this year....in September when the remains of Hermine brought us 9" of rain over 2 or 3 days....and that henbit is going to bloom any day now, which will be a treat for the bees. We have had a lot of warm days here so the winter weeds are growing pretty vigorously, although they'd be doing better if some rain would fall.

Dawn

I have a bird feeder in the front yard that is filled with sunflower seeds on one side and thistle on the other, but most of the birds are in the back yard trying to find left over hen scratch. I think I could just put that in the bird feeder.

Sorry I took so long to check in! Yesterday I got to this point, when my desk top computer got infected by a virus. It took all the time I had just to get rid of it. My lap top, which Jerreth uses for work now, had to go in the shop Friday.

I would think that a humming bird feeder would work great. I've been feeding my bees since early fall. What I do is heat up a sugar solution (one part water and two parts sugar). I bring this to a boil and put it in a jar with a lid. I punch a couple of holes in the lid and turn this, upside down on top of the whole in the inner cover of a hive. The bees take this sugar and store it in their hive, if they don't just consume it.

Incidentally, this same recipe will work for imitation maple syrup of you simply add some maple extract when making it. It is thick enough that I've never had it freeze and crack a jar. Probably, if one didn't have a humming bird feeder, it would be possible to set one of these jars up, in some kind of a holder or stand. The bees would find it and soon there would be a regular parade of workers to haul away the "booty."

I'm not at all sure what is causing this colony collapse problem. But it is notable that stationary bee keepers, away from commercial fields, are not experiencing the problem. Nosema is a common parasite of bees and not difficult to treat, if one notices it in time. I suspect that the problem is a complex one. I also suspect that it has something to do with something used in these commercial fields. Money speaks. If it is not economically advantageous, it may be very difficult to "find" the problem.

By the way, I am working on developing my bee keeping into a secondary income. My present work, though secure and in very good working conditions, has very low pay. Since most all my academic training is in the area of biblical studies, I am not qualified for most better paying jobs. Though I may know a lot about a lot of things, my transcripts don't reflect it. So, I'm trying to branch out in an area which I "know" and can do, and in which that is all that matters.

This past year we got set up for a larger operation than I've done in the past, and, we about broke even. But the honey harvest was a bust. This was partly because of the drought, and partly because I had hernia surgery in July, which disrupted my work.

I did, however, learn that anything over a couple hives is truly another job. I went up to a dozen hives at one point. This year I'm not going to have quite that many, and I have to simplify my gardening, since I must deal with the fact that I will have less time for gardening in order to make the bees a profitable venture.

George
Tahlequah, OK

Good luck to your, George, in your venture! You sure are an industrious sort and I admire that, particularly since I am not.

I hope they (whomever "they" might be, presumably the entomoligists with a focus on bees and their diseases), figure out what is causing CCD and how to treat it (first do no harm comes to mind) without causing other problems down the road. Messing with Mother Nature is rarely without consequence. In fact, the only stable ecosystems I know of exist outside of man's interference.

Susan

Today, with the temp in the mid 50s I saw a SINGLE honeybee working the blooms of the Hellebore. Don't know if it was getting any nectar, but it was loading up on pollen.