Anybody else notice dead bees?

I know there is something going on with our bee population in general as I've read about it. Some say it's from a virus, others suspect cell phone waves, but our bees are dying at an alarming rate!
At first I thought it was my imagination, but I would find one or two dead bees on my driveway almost daily. I would pick them up so they would not be stepped on , so I know they were new ones. Then I started paying close attention and would notice them more and more in other area's also. At my son's school, the park etc.
Has anyone else noticed this? Besides not using pesticides, what can we do about this? (Sorry if this was already covered - I did not see it anywhere)

 

dying bees

hi, you didn't mention - are these bumblebees or honeybees? and what state. Are they near gardens, water, fields or urban? i'll try to find out something, as my daughter's graduate studies involved bees and their behavior, etc.

 

We live near Long Beach California. Down the road from us is the Los Alamitos Armed Forces Air Base and right next to that is a very large strawberry field. Although I'm sure they probably use insecticide, I have not smelled anything (we are down wind), and I've noticed the dead (honey) bee's even when it is not stawberry season. On the other end of our area was a large golf course which has been sacrificed for buildings. After they started digging that area up, I noticed we no longer had toads in our yard. We miss those toads. I guess everything is a balancing act.

 

Pesticides do not always have an odor, the companies keep making a better one, and eliminating some of the reasons that a consumer might not want to use them. some are granular that leach into the ground when it rains. Some stay on the foliage and flowers and have no odor. And anything, including humans can ingest it by accident or by gathering leaves or herbs. Anything exposed to the contamination either on the plants, on lawns, humans on golf courses, critters who live in burrows, or frequenting standing water for a drink or a bath is at risk.

Fruit orchards and strawberry fields, to my knowledge, are sprayed with chemical fertilizers and/or pesticides. Except eco-friendly certified organic farms. The farms here are sprayed for fruit pests quite often. Chemicals are also sprayed against fungus, foraging animals, and to boost growth and yield.

Development is responsible for a lot of wildlife eradication (poor toads) - either by taking over their habitat, or by eliminating their safe areas to forage, mate and raise their young. Bees will leave an area where their habitat is destroyed in a swarm. But there has to be a queen bee to lead them. Perhaps she died and they were eradicated near the newly developed areas. Many builders use chemically-treated building materials, that are not disposed of properly and can poison an area and whatever might chew or live in it. and some spray the perimeters before selling the homes with insecticides to keep out termites from wood-accessorized areas, like decks and fences,etc.

Lawn pesticides end up in my environment even though i don't use them. I have found dead insects that should not be - and i'm guessing they got poisoned indirectly (or earlier) at the neighbor's yards, or by wind or drinking water runoff. My pets are also being exposed either by walking through it, having it fall onto their coats and then grooming themselves, or drinking from standing water that has residue from someone else's activities.

if it's just bees, it could be mites, a fungus or chemical spraying that's done over communities in large areas to target a particular insect problem. Killing the beneficial insects as a result.
the honeybees have a whole thing going on themselves, that is still a mystery. Let's hope we solve that before we all starve to death. I haven't seen a single honeybee in the garden this year, where i have enticed them with almost all bee-attracting plants. Bumblebees and wasps i do have. My few fruit trees haven't borne fruit in a while, either. I also live in a rural area where not many folks spray chemicals, but the farmers do it routinely.

Any unusual incidence of numbers of insect deaths doesn't usually bode well for humans or other wildlife, either.

 

Eileen - i'll swap my wasps for some of your bees! Mary

 

Bees

Hi Mary;

We're in coastal NC. We still have bees, both bumble and honey bees in our area. I know this is a worldwide concern in our time. I'm hoping the plants that attract them to our gardens help keep them alive. Is there anything else one can do to nurture them?

Gardengater

 

hi gardengater! i always loved coastal n.c. - i have a garden in coastal s.c..

Whatever you're doing to get those bees living in the garden, keep doing it!
i have a lot of bumblebees, too. I like them better because they're more easy-going.
But i had just a couple of honeybees in the past few years in the south carolina garden, and i have seen only a couple -and only on the butterfly bushes- in my garden in 2 or 3 years in rural northeast pennsylvania.

Certainly not using pesticides and encouraging them with their favorite plants will help. If it's a parasite or fungus or mite, there's little we can do as gardeners. The honeybee hive collapse still is not any closer to being resolved. I believe that the honeybees that are becoming Africanized will survive and pollinate our crops. but they'll be a serious threat to humans and animals.

I have a clovered backyard. That flower certainly draws the bees. But it's rare to spot a honeybee in there. and that worries me.

From what i've learned...

Beekeepers are losing large numbers of honeybees that they rent out and release in several states to pollinate large farms to hive-collapse over the winter. Farmers whose crops depend on the pollinators.

So, the renting of the bees is costing farmers more and more, raising the price of what they produce. Some beekeepers are now limiting how many farms they take their bees to pollinate. Those farms will have to come up with another pollinating insect.

The bumblebees are certainly necessary for pollination, but they are a lot better at pollinating certain veggies. I read that they're too expensive to manage and put out in large concentrated quanties into fields to pollinate. Bumblebee colonies die out completely in the winter except for young mated queens. The bumblebees are threatened as well and are decreasing in number for the same ecological reasons the other pollinators are decreasing.

I think the crisis is that the extinction of the honeybee is a global threat to our food supplies and cost of food.Either making it more expensive at point of purchase, or not having enough food, or not having any more of our favorite foods! If the bumblebees and other pollinators go too, I'd hate to imagine..

All we can do is not use chemicals in our gardens and fill it with nectar and pollen-bearing plants, and hope for the best and that the scientists figure out what's eliminating the bees.
Mary

 

I always get dead bees in the shop!

 

Well, I have not seen dead honey bees anywhere on the allotments, but I have noticed (as have my fellow allotmenteers) an apparent diminishing in numbers of these insects over the past say, three years and this year is the worst, so far.
I like them in my flowers, but I depend upon them for my crops as well.
The administrators are looking into getting 2-3 hives to place on the complex.
This is a great idea, but I am more interested in the cause and possible ways to fix the problem.
I have done a bit of reading about this problem and realize that it exists on a larger scale than only here in Nederland.
Someone has given this phenominon a name--"Colony Collapse Disorder". Now that there is a name, what we need is an understanding of the causes so that a possible correction can be worked-out.

I can report that as the summer goes on that I do indeed see more and more honey bees. This in encouraging, but it is difficult to tell what the trend is nationwide.

This makes me think of the mystery of the disappearing house sparrows that we had here and in Europe in the recent past. They are coming back now slowly...but I still have not seen one on the Lotty for 4-5 years.

 

I'm happy to report there is no shortage of bees here in the Arctic. Infact it seems like there is more bees than last yr. When you go out you can hear a low hum constantly. In the very beginning of spring its almost deafening the hum. I hope it stays that way too!

 

are there a lot of honeybees, in particular, in the arctic? maybe that's where all of mine went.... or maybe there's an answer there that the scientists can look into to save our honeybees.

 

We haven't got many honey bees around here, but there is no shortage of bumble bees. We've even got two nests here. The wasps are noticably fewer this year, but that might be natural variation.

 

Honeybee Update!

I am happy to announce that my garden in northeast pennsylvania finally Got HoneyBeez!

Now that the dragon's blood sedum, echinacea, allyssum, lupines are in full bloom, i am seeing a healthy (healthier than i imagined from the lack of bees until this week!) population of honeybees. Apparently the sedum in bloom is what attracted a scout, and he apparently spread the word. They seem a little aggressive when i get real close to get photos. can't say i blame them.

i use no pesticides -and the spreading flowering sedum itself has dozens of honeybees working it all day. i expect that when the buddleia blooms in a couple of weeks, and all the butterfly/bee attracting plants are blooming together, they will attract more honeybees. so i'm happy and hopeful. If i keep them happy, my garden's pollination cycle will be at it's full potential. and maybe they'll help pollinate the farms around me - if their pesticides don't kill them off.
mary

 

I have noticed wasps here in N. California falling out of the sky dead.