You cut the old flowers off when they look ugly to you. Other than that, continue to do whatever you've been doing and enjoy them! They look awesome. You might want to put down some mulch such as compost on the bare soil. Short term, mulch helps to hold in moisture and prevent weeds. Long term, it breaks down and improves the quality of the soil, adding nutrients. Keep the mulch a few inches away from the base of plants.

Regarding what the reviewed published scientific literature says about bees and imidacloprid. When a scientific paper is submitted for publication, it is the responsibility of the Editor and the reviewers to see that the paper adequately and fairly covers the prior published literature. Here is a very recent reviewed scienific research paper from a European source. Title: Risk assessment for side-effects of neonicotinoids against bumblebees with and without impairing foraging behavior. Authors: Mommaerts, Veerle; Reynders, Sofie; Boulet, Jana; Besard, Linde; Sterk, Guido; Smagghe, Guy. Authors affiliation: Laboratory of Cellular Genetics, Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, Free University of Brussels, Brussels, Belg. Published in: Ecotoxicology (2010), 19(1), pages 207-215. Abstract: "Bombus terrestris bumblebees are important pollinators of wild flowers, and in modern agriculture they are used to guarantee pollination of vegetables and fruits. In the field it is likely that worker bees are exposed to pesticides during foraging. To date, several tests exist to assess lethal and sublethal side-effects of pesticides on bee survival, growth/development and reprodn. Within the context of ecotoxicol. and insect physiol., we report the development of a new bioassay to assess the impact of sublethal concns. on the bumblebee foraging behavior under lab. conditions. In brief, the exptl. setup of this behavior test consists of two artificial nests connected with a tube of about 20 cm and use of queenless micro-colonies of 5 workers. In one nest the worker bees constructed brood, and in the other food (sugar and pollen) was provided. Before exposure, the worker bees were allowed a training to forage for untreated food; afterwards this was replaced by treated food. Using this setup we investigated the effects of sublethal concns. of the neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid, known to neg. affect the foraging behavior of bees. For comparison within the family of neonicotinoid insecticides, we also tested different concns. of two other neonicotinoids: thiamethoxam and thiacloprid, in the lab. with the new bioassay. Finally to evaluate the new bioassay, the authors also tested sublethal concns. of imidacloprid in the greenhouse with use of queenright colonies of B. terrestris, and here worker bees needed to forage/fly for food that was placed at a distance of 3 m from their hives. In general, the expts. showed that concns. that may be considered safe for bumblebees can have a neg. influence on their foraging behavior. Therefore it is recommended that behavior tests should be included in risk assessment tests for highly toxic pesticides because impairment of the foraging behavior can result in a decreased pollination, lower reprodn. and finally in colony mortality due to a lack of food." ----------------------------------------------------- I have a copy of the full paper but I can only post the abstract due to copyright restrictions. However, I can send a limited number of copies of the full paper by e-mail "for educational purposes" if anyone desires to read the full paper. I can also quote a section (or sections) to make a point in a discussion. Here is some of what the autors cite about the research that had been previously published on the subject: " To date, most studies on bees mainly consider mortality (Suchail et al. 2000), while less attention is given to sublethal effects which may be detrimental towards pollination and subsequent bee populations. Thompson et al. (2003) and Desneux et al. (2007) reported that sublethal effects must be considered when evaluating the impact of pesticides on pollinators. To date, multiple laboratory studies have focused on the impact of pesticides on the biochemistry of honeybees (Armengaud et al. 2000). However, interpretation of the negative effects on the neurophysiological capacities of insects is difficult, and in turn the effects for the insect or the whole colony are unknown. For honeybees the proboscis extension response (PER) assay has been used to determine the impact of pesticides on the learning ability (Lambin et al. 2001; Decourtye et al. 2004a; El Hassani et al. 2008). Further, Decourtye et al. (2004b) showed the reliability of this method to detect disturbances at the level of the learning behavior on free-flying foraging bees under more natural conditions. For honeybees such abilities are essential because they rely on their visual learning capacity to communicate the distance and the direction to the food source. Pesticide exposure to honeybees while foraging could affect their orientation behavior (Vandame et al. 1995; Bortolotti et al. 2003; Thompson 2003; Yang et al. 2008). In France, it was believed that honeybee mortalities in areas of sunflower crops were linked to the use of pesticides (Bonmatin et al. 2003). This assumption was not supported by Schmuck et al. (2001), who found that the residues in pollen and nectar of sunflowers were too low to be detrimental. But in the field, bees can be chronically exposed to pesticide residues via contaminated stored food (Schmuck et al. 2001; Bonmatin et al. 2003; Miranda et al. 2003; Chauzat et al. 2006). Numerous studies have reported that ingestion of small quantities can lead to sublethal effects in honeybees (Colin et al. 2001; Decourtye et al. 2003); in laboratory and semi-field tests it was reported that low concentrations of imidacloprid taken up via the pollen were responsible for changes in foraging and food collecting and for the loss of ability to communicate and learn (Colin et al. 2001; Decourtye et al. 2003). Similar sublethal effects on the learning ability were found after exposure to fipronil (Desneux et al. 2007), on the communication dance by carbamate insecticides (Thompson et al. 2003) and on the homing flight by the pyrethroid insecticide deltamethrin (Vandame et al. 1995; Ramirez-Romero et al. 2005). Until now, most studies have been performed on honeybees, while other bees like bumblebees may also be affected by pesticide poisoning." -------------------------------------------------

Hi Can you keep us posted on the success of the tubers? I love Dahlias and I start Figaro and Harlequin every year from seed. When I've pulled them after the frost has killed them I've noticed fairly big tubers too, but I never thought to try and overwinter them (I'll get them before the frost this year). I always start my seeds about 8 weeks before the last frost to get them big enough to transplant at the end of May - so mid-March here in Calgary. It might be nice to save some seed starting room. I'm intrigued!

Well. This really ticks me off. Here i've been calling him Simon for years.... I have to find out where my daughter got him from, which nursery. I know it was labelled 'Simon Fraser'. Just went out and checked and he doesn't have a medallion like my other roses do. Sheesh. Well, in spite of everything, the problem may be solved. I talked to dh yesterday and he'll ask his friend with a bobcat to first dig a hole for the bush and then dig it out and transplant it. I'll be able to do Miss Sunrise myself (hopefully with help from my son because the ground is awfully hard). I'm really upset about this. I've gotten attached to this rose because my daughter gave it to me - not that i'll like it any less, but, well, you know....