# Bees



## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

More on the tough time our insect friends are having....drought, CCD, mites, and viruses.

Regards, Mike

http://www.agweb.com/article/honeybees_in_crisis/


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## cwright (Oct 19, 2011)

Yep.. I had noticed around here you hardly ever see bees any more. Use to see them all the time working the white clover.
Sooo. I bought two swarms and two hives to get started. I'm sure its going to be a learning curve for me but i'm going to give it a whirl.

CW


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## NewBerlinBaler (May 30, 2011)

Read on to learn what the Big Agra-Chemical complex doesn't want you to know...

http://inthesetimes.com/article/14598/a_deadly_disorder_at_the_epa/


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

That's interesting....couple of guys are using bumblebees instead of honeybees this year, seems the honeybees have been on the entitlement program too long....bumblebees are suppose to be harder workers, visit many more plants farther away. Definitely a decrease in the bee population no matter which one you use.


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## FCF (Apr 23, 2010)

NewBerlinBaler said:


> Read on to learn what the Big Agra-Chemical complex doesn't want you to know...
> 
> http://inthesetimes....der_at_the_epa/


Guess Bayer didn't want to list a 10th trend in ag!


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## askinner (Nov 15, 2010)

Monsanto probably has all the bees in court for keeping pollen from RR alfalfa?


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## cwright (Oct 19, 2011)

NewBerlinBaler said:


> Read on to learn what the Big Agra-Chemical complex doesn't want you to know...
> 
> http://inthesetimes....der_at_the_epa/


Reports/studies from the EU and France to me are biased. They ban everything they can to protect their own markets.
Not to say it has no merit 'but is met with a lot of skepticism' so I will follow the reports as they unfold.

Personally I think bees are being starved to death by over harvesting honey and replacing with sugar water plus not enough genetic diversity.

CW


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## FarmerCline (Oct 12, 2011)

I've been messing with honeybees for 2 years now. I started out with five colonies only two made it threw the first winter bought six more nucs last spring I now have one colony left and I don't know how much longer it is going to hang on. I can't really figure out why I am losing them its not mites as I have pure Russian stock which have the most tolorence towards the mites and I rarely see any, I have not seen any hive beetles and no sign of disease. It seems like they are starving to death. I have never taken any honey off and I feed sugar syrup. The first year colonies do not even get one hive body full of honey before winter but the two that made it threw the first winter had 4 full boxes of honey going into the winter and had emptied them and starved by January. I hope someone figures out what is going on because we need honeybees.


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## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

Must be something to this neonicotenoid herbicides as honeybees are just being devastated in a short period of time....I got a package of bees last spring and I am afraid to take a look....we are going to be about bees about like we were with eagles/raptors in the sixties with ddt....wait until the species is nearly extinct before we do something and then it will take a half of a century to recover. I am not a environmentalist, but I don't bury my head in the sand either. Bee elimination will be devastating to many forms of agriculture.

Regards, Mike


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## Mike120 (May 4, 2009)

somedevildawg said:


> ....bumblebees are suppose to be harder workers, visit many more plants farther away.


Damn things can fly faster than a Deere as well.....


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## rjmoses (Apr 4, 2010)

Honey bee colony problems worry me considerably. I see very few bees in my area any more. So it causes me to wonder what the effects will be. Are we playing with fire?

I always think of that old commercial: "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature! ---- Zap".

Ralph


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## NDVA HAYMAN (Nov 24, 2009)

Boy, I was going to put up several hives in Va. but now I don't know. CW and you other beekeepers, keep us informed about what is going on. I have bunches of hives in ND and they seem to be doing well according to the company that brings them there. Think I will try to get someone to bring their hives over to the farm in Va. I don't know a darn thing about em.


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## Nitram (Apr 2, 2011)

There is one aspect to them that I don't like. My brother has a lot of colonies spread around our area and some in Oklahoma. Only 20 +- @ my place and during the winter above 47• the little buggers come and steal the grain dust out of my rolled grain that is for my cows. Now you have to see the cloud of them to appreciate how much those thieving bast...er buggers get off with! Bless there little hearts.


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## askinner (Nov 15, 2010)

As a point of interest, we seem to have had a really good season with the bees. I had a few late cuts of alfalfa, and certailnly was impressed with the number of them I saw. There are no artificial hives near me as far as I know, though I do have a fairly large wild colony on my farm.

I would imagine the chem use in Aus would be little different to the US, so it makes me wonder if there are other factors at play?


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## cwright (Oct 19, 2011)

FarmerCline said:


> The first year colonies do not even get one hive body full of honey before winter but the two that made it threw the first winter had 4 full boxes of honey going into the winter and had emptied them and starved by January. I hope someone figures out what is going on because we need honeybees.


I think it is genetics. It may be a mistake but Im trying Carnolian. Seems the Italian strains have the same problem you discribed.
I may lose the start up hives here too but am still going to give it a try.

CW


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## cwright (Oct 19, 2011)

Nitram said:


> There is one aspect to them that I don't like. My brother has a lot of colonies spread around our area and some in Oklahoma. Only 20 +- @ my place and during the winter above 47• the little buggers come and steal the grain dust out of my rolled grain that is for my cows. Now you have to see the cloud of them to appreciate how much those thieving bast...er buggers get off with! Bless there little hearts.


How stable are they? Out of the 20 how many colonies fail?

Interesting about the temps and the grain dust. I guess they are using the grain dust as a pollen substitute.

CW


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## Nitram (Apr 2, 2011)

Yes to the substitute. He puts candy boards on in fall thinking couple per year 10% seems like a familiar number. He's really knowledgeable on bee's.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Bees? Really simple explanation:


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## cwright (Oct 19, 2011)

Saw this story:
Seems not just the honey bees are affected.

WASHINGTON (AP) - It's not just honey bees that are in trouble. The fuzzy American bumblebee seems to be disappearing in the Midwest.
Two new studies in Thursday's journal Science conclude that wild bees, like the American bumblebee, are increasingly important in pollinating flowers and crops that provide us with food. And, at least in the Midwest, they seem to be dwindling in an alarming manner, possibly from disease and parasites.
Wild bees are difficult to track so scientists have had a hard time knowing what's happening to them. But because of one man in a small town in Illinois in the 1890s, researchers now have a better clue.
Naturalist Charles Robertson went out daily in a horse-drawn buggy and meticulously collected and categorized insects in Carlinville in southern Illinois.
More than a century later, Laura Burkle of Montana State University went back to see what changed. Burkle and her colleagues reported that they could only find half the species of wild bees that Robertson found - 54 of 109 types.
"That's a significant decline. It's a scary decline," Burkle said Thursday.
And what's most noticeable is the near absence of one particular species, the yellow-and-black American bumblebee. There are 4,000 species of wild bees in America and 49 of them are bumblebees. In the Midwest, the most common bee has been Bombus pensylvanicus, known as the American bumblebee. It only stings defensively, experts say.
But in 447 hours of searching, Burkle's team found only one American bumblebee, a queen.
That fits with a study that University of Illinois entomologist Sydney Cameron did two years ago when she found a dramatic reduction in the number and range of the American bumblebee.
"It was the most dominant bumblebee in the Midwest," Cameron said, saying it now has pretty much disappeared from much of its northern range. Overall, its range has shrunk by about 23 percent, although it is still strong in Texas and the West, she said.
"People call them the big fuzzies," Cameron said. "They're phenomenal animals. They can fly in the snow."
Her research found four species of bumblebees in trouble: the American bumblebee, the rusty-patched bumblebee, the western bumblebee and the yellow-banded bumblebee.
A separate Science study by a European team showed that wild bees in general have a larger role in pollinating plants than the honey bees that are trucked in to do the job professionally.
Those domesticated bees are already in trouble with record high prices for bees to pollinate California almond trees, said David Inouye at the University of Maryland.
Scientists suspect a combination of disease and parasites for the dwindling of both wild and domesticated bees.
___
Online:
Science: http://www.sciencemag.org


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## Nitram (Apr 2, 2011)

Interesting read on GMO and CCD. Tried to copy/paste link using phone :-( it's on "offthegridnews.com" Are Gmo's killing our honeybees? Will edit when I get home. Martin


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## cwright (Oct 19, 2011)

http://www.offthegridnews.com/2013/03/06/are-gmos-killing-our-honey-bees/

Here it is .

Very interesting. 1500 hundred colonies... Thats huge.


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## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

I will check my bees(remove top cover) next week when temps get back to the mid-sixties. I am very uneasy about them. That was a interesting read Charles....I have read other reports referencing GMO's.

Regards, Mike


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## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

Just came in from checking my bees and they did not make it through the winter. Just a few dozen dead bees inside the hive. Looks like a classic case of CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder). Really disgusting how this is devastating the little guys.....don't know if I will try again until/if they get a handle on this syndrome. If I can catch a wild swarm I may try again.

Mike


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## FCF (Apr 23, 2010)

"Bee elimination will be devastating to many forms of agriculture." - VOL

According to this report bees will benefit HIV research/mankind:

http://health.yahoo.net/articles/healthcare/researchers-bee-venom-can-kill-hiv-virus


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## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

More on neonicotenoids.....could be something to this.....I really hope so....it would be good to be able to narrow this decimator down. I really hope it is not GMO's....not trying to protect Monsanto, but I like RR varieties and would hate to give them up.

Regards, Mike

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/16/insecticide-unacceptable-danger-bees


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