Survival of the fittest! And I'm not talking about the bees either seems humans shoot themselves in the foot all the time. I just wish "they" wouldn't take the rest of us down with them.

What would be interesting, although I won't be alive to witness it, will be the way mankind finally puts an end to our species. Will it be something as simple as destroying our pollinators? Just how important are these little bees anyway???

Well, I asked google and here's some food for though not that this informational excursion will do any good but what the heck.

1) http://www.askquestions.org/details.php?id=9286&gclid=CI3hx6_4540CFQdbHgoddyUJrg

2) http://www.main.org/cahbs/why.htm

Thanks, for opening this thread andreajp this is a serious and important developement and I know that there are people with training and knowledge working to correct(?) this maybe not as fast as the other people "limping" around.

I wonder what they sprayed with... The government says Btk (the biological stuff) doesn't affect bees. Take that for what it's worth. Other insecticides like malathion can affect bees. Health departments usually spray or bait with Btk for mosquitoes, or they stock ponds with mosquito fish (Gambusia), a voracious little guppy-type fish.

i thought they sprayed with a pyrethrin...they said it was a chrysanthemum derivative and that's the only pesticide that i know of that is....

pyrethrins are broad spectrum and dangerous to bees.

When did they spray, how did they spray, and what time of day? Insecticides that kill bees typically effect them when a flower they visit has been dusted with Sevin-type powders, or they visit a flower that is still wet from a mist spray. Some municipalities spray shortly before or after dark to help prevent bee deaths. I remember when I was a kid, there was lots of spraying going on in cities, and the bees survived it. It may just be that the bees who usually visit your garden have found another nectar or pollen source that they like. I have a beehive that I keep at the back of my property. There are days that I don't see any of them in the garden, but I still see lots of other pollinating insects.
Mrs H

they sprayed last monday, tuesday, and wednesday by way of crop dusters. they started at 7 pm (which isn't dark yet) and didn't stop until 11 pm.

i would like to believe you mrs. H. maybe they did abandon all of my lavendar, sunflowers, blooming oregano, bee balm, and everything else they just loved for something else in my neighborhood....but so suddenly?

i wonder if carla in sac has noticed the same thing...or if anyone else in sacramento has noticed if their bees are gone too?

Man that stinks. I am so sorry for your news and it is scary that it is not a really new phenomenon but an ongoing trend.
We had a big bee die-off locally over the winter and I for one noticed my cucumber vines look great except for the lack of cukes.
Orchards are big industry here, apples especially. My sister in law had hardly any cherries this year and I am wondering about the apple crops for which our area is famous. Sad sad times we are heading for.

Andrea, I'm in Sac too (obviously), near Arco. When I checked the garden this morning I didn't see any of my usual bees or wasps. I hope I'm just being paranoid. I'll be really upset if they're killing off all the pollinators & beneficials I've worked so hard to attract!

Carrie

Hi, Carla here,
No I'm in Land Park and we haven't gotten sprayed yet, and I'm wishing hard the winds keep up so they can't spray us. I still have lots of honey bees, little bees, bumbles, and unhappily, paper wasps (I got a bad sting a few weeks ago and I now have a vendetta against wasps)
I read in the Sac Bee today the city council wants people to come testify about the spraying--apparantly it's been decided cities have no jurisdiction to stop the spraying and therefore no public hearings on the matter, only the State makes that decision, and they need people to rally together to get the State's attention. Maybe Andrea and Carrie are just what they're looking for!
Carla in Sac

Carla, wasps are beneficial! I have tons of yellow jackets. No nest of theirs in my garden. They just visit to pick & gather insects from my tomatoes & squash. That said if I was ever stung by one I'd put up a trap.

Some individual Yellow Jackets are more agressive than others and I have no problem dispatching them. There is a nest behind the side mirror on my car and those never bother me so they live unmolested.

As the air turns cooler in the fall Yellow Jackets seem to get a bit more aggressive as a rule I read some where and have noticed that myself.

Andreajp - Sorry to hear that you got sprayed. Maybe there was a serious problem that, overall was worth it, but it still hurts when the beneficial insects suffer as a result.

I've been lucky with honeybees. I don't see as many as I used to, but my property is organic and I see more of them then my friends and neighbors do. So I guess I am providing "some shelter from the storm".

I am also getting more bumblebees and even more of the smaller less-well-known bees. Some days, I can find many small wasps and other pollinator insects on a small patch of flowers. I haven't tried to identify them, but as long as they are around, I don't care what their names are. ;)

There is an area in my woods that seems to attract a LOT of insect-predator wasps. They are rather large blue-black with orange legs. They dig holes into which they deposit insects (mostly small grasshoppers and an insect I can't identify) as far as I can tell.

I thought they were anthills last year until I noticed the wasps walking around and diging (and fighting sometimes). They seem to use a very specific area of the woods, so either the soil or the sunlight matters to them. I make sure not to bother that area, to encourage their egg-laying success.

I am nervous around wasps. I've had a couple of bad attacks of them in my younger years. I got a real case of the "willys" taking pics of them. But I will still do anything I can to keep them happy since they seem to reduce pesty insects.

yardenman,

those large wasps with the orange legs might be katydid wasps...if so, they aren't aggressive. i found a rather large one in my house the other day...almost three inches long! umm..frightening to say the least...luckily, it just flew out when i opened the door.

they sprayed the area for mosquitoes because two people got west nile and they found mosquitoes with west nile in the area. ummm...but they've found that spraying the are for mosquitoes is "potentially impacting" the population of mosquitoes...they don't even know if it is really doing any good! ugh.

bees are still gone btw...they haven't come back yet.

bee die offs have happening all over the us/europe for a while now, and are unlikely related to BtK. IIRC about 30%.

here is an example link to the cause
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL1826459120070718