OT: birds & bees; Re: HYB: Pollination vectors
- To: i*@onelist.com
- Subject: OT: birds & bees; Re: HYB: Pollination vectors
- From: J* B*
- Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 15:01:59 -0500
From: James Brooks <hirundo@tricon.net>
At 10:55 AM 1/28/99 EST, you wrote:
>From: StorYlade@aol.com
>
>In a message dated 1/28/1999 8:18:52 AM Central Standard Time,
Will they come to my feeder
>now that I am in a heavily populated area?
Probably
Anyone know when I should put the
>feeders up?
When your hummers first arrive in the spring. about mid-April in your region.
>The observations I made, mainly in seedling beds, was that most of the "bee
>pods" came from bumble bees and small crawling insects. In the early 90's I
>was seeing a lot of bee pods. (remember, I had about an acre filled with
>seedlings), but in the last three or four years I only saw three or four pods
>per year. Beds were the same, so something has changed in the environment
out
>there.
Not sure what you mean by bee "pods", but I can assure you something has
changed out there: trachael mites and verroa mites have virtually wiped out
honeybees in this part of the world. Ten years ago I had a semi-commercial
bee operation of 45 hives, supplying several regional divisions of the
supermarket chains. Seven years ago I was out of business. Two years ago my
last hive died off. Some commercial raisers are keeping beehives going with
constant medication programs, but there wasn't any profit in it after
medication costs for a little guy like me. I suspect honey prices have
jumped a lot in the past decade, but being a diabetic I dare not go down
that aisle in the supermarket anymore. My blood sugar pops over 200 if I
get within 10 feet of the honey shelves ;-).
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