I haven't seen a single honey bee here since the May 20 tornado in 2013. I guess when the trees all went so did the honey bees. I've seen a few bumble bees.

I think I would like to learn to raise bees but I know the work is extensive. I have noticed man made hives down in the ten mile flat but I don't know who has them,or even if they have bees in them. I guess I could do a little snooping and find out, right?

When we first moved here in 2002 we had an old Walnut tree that had a huge honey bee hive in it. We had a bad flood,that took the tree down. We called the local bee guys and he said not to move them till fall. So when he finally came to move them he said they were all dead? Couldn't say why.

Thats my total knowledge of local bee activity.

When the bees and frogs are all gone I think it will be time to duck and cover!!!

I'm sad that you're missing bees in your area. They're so important, as you mention. Fortunately, their plight garners much attention and the younger generation avidly supports them, many learn to maintain hives.

The international Bee Research Association claims they fly up to 4 miles to pollination and that millions of trips by them are necessary to make just one jar of honey.

A lot of our fruits & vegetables as well as honey comes from South America and China. Why should America be importing food from out side where they use poisonous chemicals that have been banded here for years and the EPA won't allow it to be used. There is no telling what it is doing to us. The only way to get insecticide free food is to grow it ourselves. The farmers here use chemicals & insecticides approved by the EPA, who are paid off by big chemical companies, and claim to be non hazardous. But the Honey Bees are dying.

I don't buy anything but local honey. DH wants a hive, but I think it's more work than the chicken's he wants. And as soon as we got one some neighbor would decide to spray. For now, I have seen lots of honey bee's this summer. One was going for cucumber flowers when I was picking yesterday. The dogs were barking at something last night, pretty sure it was the toad that lives under my potting bench. I had a little frog hitch a ride on my garden seat one day. It has been a bad year for produce in the garden, but we have critters.

Not many beekeepers will place a single hive on someone's property. There are a couple of reasons for this:
1) If they don't know the person real well, they are likely to wonder if they really and truly don't spray with anything that will hurt the bees.
2) It is a lot of work to get everything together to work bees, and if it's just for one hive, that might be a deal breaker.

Anyway, that's why I don't put my hives on other people's places, though I have been tempted at times.

There is indeed a growing interest in beekeeping. I've given a class two years running and each time we've had an average of something like 22 people in the class. The Northeastern Oklahoma Beekeepers Association (NEOBA) gives classes in multiple locations and at different times of the year. I'm not a member. But I like what I see in their group.

George
Tahlequah, OK

If you really want bees, you need to grow Caryopteris (Blue mist black knight). It has the word spirea attached to it, but it isn't spirea. I have 7 of them, and they are blooming for the second time this summer. They have arched over because they are so loaded with the little flowers, and with the honey bees. Every time I try to reach in to pull a weed, the bees scare me.

I also have about 100 rose bushes and 16 crape myrtles. But the caryopteris are the ones loaded with the bees.

I have not sprayed insecticide or fungicide in probably 10 years.

Sammy

Is it true that systemic products endanger bees?

Neonicotinoids do. I'm not sure about others. If the pesticide is expressed through the pollen, and the honeybee goes for it, then it probably harms them.

A bee is an insect, I think, so an insecticide would discourage or kill bees. Also it would kill other insects that may possibly attract bees.

People say a fungicide is harmless, but it is designed to kill. Once you start killing even the smallest "bugs", it makes sense to me that you are interfering with the natural process in your garden, and harming microbes that are good and bad.

I am sorry that my vocabulary is inadequate to give a good explanation.

Also, I destroy all that I am saying by putting down ant baits and granules. I really do not like ants.

Sammy

I hate that neonicotinoids ever were invented. I've stopped buying flats of flowering annual plants in spring to add to my garden for instant color because most (probably all) wholesale growers that grow for big box stores and nurseries spray their bedding plants with these systemic pesticides and it can make the plants toxic to bees, butterflies and other insects for months thereafter. I used to routinely pick up flats of annuals to add instant color to each raised bed as I planted it, and then later on other flowers sprouted from seed and filled in the remaining area. Now I raise my own flats of bedding plants at the same time I am raising veggies in flats to later transplant into the garden. It is a ton more work to raise all the flowers at the same time I'm raising my own veggie transplants, but I have the peace of mind of knowing I'm putting flowers in my garden beds that have not been sprayed with systemic pesticides.

We have no honey bee shortage here around our place, and never have, but then I have only sprayed a broad-spectrum insecticide one since we moved here in 1999 (I sprayed it last year for grasshoppers) and I took great care to spray it at twilight after the honey bees no longer were in the garden.

I do go to extraordinary lengths to keep the bees happy, trying to have plants in bloom year-round so they have something in winter time. Also in winter I have bee feeders out for them (they are just hummingbird feeders with the bee guards removed) and make sure to put out cracked corn every morning for them (and for the doves). Bees also will visit the compost pile to see if any interesting fruit scraps (or anything else) have been tossed onto it, especially in winter). I encourage henbit to grow and bloom both in the yard and garden for the sake of the bees and butterflies. In a mild winter, we often have henbit blooming from December through April. I know it is a "weed" but I like weeds that keep the honey bees and other little flying creatures fed.

Since the early 2000s, bee populations worldwide have suffered for many reasons. One is Colony Collapse Disease, although the news stories I read on this year's Oklahoma bee crisis back in May said CCD is not believed to be a problem here. Certain pesticides, like the neonicotinoids, are believed to be responsible for some of the problems, and so are (in some areas) certain kinds of mites and one type of nosema disease (similar to nosema locuste that kills grasshoppers, but a different kind of nosema that affects bees). The problem seems worse among the commercial beekeepers, and particularly among those who travel across the country with bee hives that are leased to farmers for pollination. An inherent problem with those millions of working bee hives that are transported all over the country is that the travel itself likely is stressful, then the bees often are used to pollinate a monoculture crop whereas in the wild they thrive on a polyculture diet. Also, it is my understanding that traveling bees like that often are given supplemental feedings that contain High Fructose Corn Syrup and some folks believe the HFCS is bad for them.

I have friends who farm and ranch near us with the use of synthetic broad-spectrum pesticides, and they complain about a lack of bees and butterflies. Of course they don't have bees and butterflies---they are continuously spraying pesticidess that kill them off! I think they cannot have it both ways, but people get set in their ways and believe they "must" use those broad-spectrum, often systemic, pesticides and you cannot convince them to try growing things without them.

The bees, butterflies and other creatures also suffer from the nonstop conversion of land filled with native plantings to concrete development. Every time an acre that supports them is bulldozed and built upon, they lose that acre of plants that once sustained them. With all the nonstop building that goes on in this country, it is not surprising the bees are suffering. I'm not anti-development, but I wish that everyone who bulldozes native plantings and builds upon that land then would come back and do all their landscaping with native plants that would provide nectar, pollen and shelter for the bees, butterflies and other little flying creatures that need it.

Dawn, it is always a pleasure to read your well written responses. My plants are over a year old, and I don't remember if there were so many bees last year. At least some of the plants from Lowe's are not sprayed because I came home the other day with a bee in the van.

I have never regretted stopping all spraying, even though I lost most of my roses.

I feel like the land is far better with the lack of spray.

Sammy

If Lowes and Home Depot have not stopped selling plants treated with neonicotinoids, the have agreed to stop in the next year. I think plants so treated are labeled, if you can find the small print.

Macmex,

Sorry to have spoken out of turn about Bee keepers maybe putting hives out on others property. I can't remember if it was Oklahoma Gardening on PBS or some place they told about some Bee Keepers willing to place hives on private property. I will know better in the future.

Oh, don't worry about it. There is bound to be some beekeeper who will do this :)

Sammy, Thank you. I am glad you are happy with the use of less chemicals. One reason I slowly stopped growing roses over the years was because I didn't want to use the chemicals necessary to keep them happy. I never had as many rose bushes as you did, and this week's weather appears to have killed 2 of the 3 rose bushes that remained. I won't replace them.

Amy, That is good news to hear, but I am somewhat skeptical and will believe it when I see it. Most of the plants I've ever bought at Lowes, Home Depot or Wal-Mart don't have labels with fine print. Half the time all they have is a bar code and every now and then one of the flats will have six-packs with the standard little plastic labels stuck in them. I've never seen pesticide use addressed on those labels. Maybe once they make it an official policy that is followed 100% of the time, we'll be able to trust them to live up to that policy.

I also read an article somewhere that said bees have seemingly become more scarce in fields of Round-Up Ready crops, based on anecdotal reports from some folks. I don't know of a reason for that, other than maybe the bees might be trying to avoid crops they know are sprayed with chemicals. Given how widespread the use of such crops are, that could be another reason that bees seem more scarce.

George, I don't know. The couple of beekeepers I know here are very, very picky about what their bees are exposed to and I'm not sure that they'd put their hives on any property other than their own. They might have done that "once upon a time", but with all the bee problems that exist, I kinda think that time has passed. I am sure that some beekeepers probably would, but the ones that I know well do not do that any longer. Even if they keep their bee hives on their own property, they still have to worry about what pesticides are being sprayed on nearby land as well since bees are gonna fly where they want.

Dawn

I have seen plants with "markers" that give the name of the plant, things like full sun and a statement that the plant has been treated to prevent aphids, etc. I don't think it mentioned the specific insecticide and I don't remember where I was. I broke down and bought 2 mums from Lowes the other day, but like you, I have avoided buying from them. Who knows what else might be used on them.

I was saddened to find my toad drowned in the dog's water bucket yesterday. I guess the sides were too steep to get out. I have a shallow plant saucer in the flower bed for safer drinking for critters.

Is it just the annuals that are pre-treated with the insecticides or do they treat the perennials as well? I just bought a bunch of perennials from lowes and home depot and didn't even think about this. I guess I still have the tags, so I'll check to see what they say. This was my first year growing sedums, and we have had clouds of bees all over them since they started blooming. I just bought six more of them yesterday, along with some penstemon that was on sale.

Here is an article, I was wrong, they are phasing them out by 2019! Sigh. I don't know if they use them on perennials. I guess you could ask where you purchased them.Neonicotinoid

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

You're probably right, Dawn. I guess I hope that, like you said, after the first year the chemicals will break down or neutralize so that they're no longer harmful. I do shop around at Marcum's Nursery quite a bit, but they seem to buy a lot of their perennial stock from the same commercial growers that Home Depot and Lowe's uses. I think they do tag which plants were grown locally in their own plots, but there's no guarantee they don't use pesticides as well unless I missed it on their website somewhere.

we had a few early in the year but since the rains I haven't seen anything. Our hyssop is usually full of them. The big bumbles are all over it though. Dozens at a time.