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backyard bees gone? (2 Viewers)

jape

Well-known member
im not a great news watcher but have seen several reports of bee numbers diminishing in recent years.

i have bushes and trees such as cherry laurel and may blossom and azaleas covered in flowers in recent weeks, many finishing already, but i have seen very few honey bees. i have seen a few bumble bees and one or two honey bees hut nothing like i would have expected. hopefully other insects are pollenating. the berries will tell later i suppose.

is this a genuine disaster or seasonable/regional? where are the clouds of droning bees we used to get? what do you see in your gardens?
 
I was just thinking the same thing myself. Hazy memories of childhood in the 70s and 80s seemed to suggest bumblebees were a lot less common than honey bees back then. I've watched my whitebeam flower copiously this year, and most of the pollination was being done by bumblebees and flies, with only the occasional honey bee.
 
that is exactly right, if you were out in the garden, fields and country lanes you saw the odd bumble bee but honey bees were everywhere. if you were on a lawn with clover they would be all around. less clover too. black and yellow bees but not like wasps. the ones here now are darker and much fewer.
bit of a worry for crops.
 
Jape I take it you are talking about the European Honey Bee? It is the feral one out here, but of course the one that does all of the work. Our 100's of different species of native bee tap out after one visit to a nectar source per day. 3:)

Nearly all commercial hives out here employ the European Honey Bee, and they have been suffering quite a lot with BBC (Bee Colony Collapse) disorder (though perhaps not as much as elsewhere in the world), and attack from various mites etc. Current research has it as a cumulative effect of herbicide and pesticide loads in the environment - particularly agriculture, as well as such things as habitat loss, and lesser flowering due to the drying of the landscape (mostly erosion, lack of diverse vegetative cover, inappropriate land use, wetland loss, and microclimate effects).

With the industrialisation and attempted monopolisation of the the entire agricultural cycle by corporates (notably Monsanto - hybrid seed provision under license and the chemicals to grow them) this will only get worse.

Organics, companion planting, biodiversity, soil building, and restoration of the fully functioning hydrodynamic cycle and wetlands will be key to saving the bees (and us ! :eek!: )

This applies at an individual garden /block /suburb level as much as it does to broader catchment, rural, and agricultural landscapes.

I know a lot of folk here on BF are into feeders etc, but really, the best policy is to make naturally occurring food sources/ plants, shelter, water etc available.

Our native bees, wasps, insects etc respond well to provision of a variety stacked tubular wooden and earthen "Bee Hotels" :t:


Chosun :gh:
 
it was probably in Oz i saw the reports but my neighbours kept bees and supplied honey and they didnt seem worried. lovely eucalyptus flowers eveywhere for lovely honey at a very good price for locals. but they were reclusive like me and didnt have tv, just popped their hives on properties all around the state forests in Vic.

it didnt come to mind again until watching my yard here in UK (unfortunately) at present and i noticed very few bees despite the huge masses of flowers.

i shall do some more reading but if bees are going we are surely in trouble.
 
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)

This is usually in reference to domesticated hives of honey bees, but I assume it would affect remaining wild populations as well.

It's more a synergistic effect: no specific cause has been nailed down, it's likely cumulative of pesticides, habitat, intensive shipping of hives (commercial beekeeping/pollination services), monoculture food sources, mites, and disease/viral. Any one of these the bees could probably fight off, but not all of them at once.

It's much more severe (apparently) in the USA.

There is some severe danger lurking in CCD given that modern farming depends on human-managed bee colonies. If we left it to the natural world, a huge chunk of our crops would not get pollinated effectively by wild bee populations alone.
 
Electromagnetic radiation from cell towers, wi-fi and devices is killing not only the bees but everything else as well. And it is going to get much, much worse with 5G. See my post asking for people to sign the appeal for a moratorium on 5G.
 
In the two years since I began posting on BF, the world has lost a great many bees, insects and birds, among other forms of life. In 2017, we had lost approximately 75% of the world's honeybees, and now we have lost 90%. Our food security is at risk, as is life itself, if 5G kills the insects. It is predicted to do by many reputable independent scientists.

The following link shows dead bees and insects under 5G poles in California. It seems they enter into the 5G area near the pole and just die. There isn't much 5G around yet, but it won't be long before there is 5G everywhere. Not just terrestrial 5G, but in 10 months we will have 5G, LTE, 4G, 3G and Wi-Fi broadcast onto the earth from space by a great many satellites, so that the entire globe will be covered in electromagnetic radiation.

Here is the link: https://www.activistpost.com/2019/07/5g-is-bad-for-bees-california-video-provides-sad-evidence.html

When the insects go extinct, so will every other life form on the planet. I have asked before and I am asking again, please sign the petition for a moratorium on 5G from space: https://5gspaceappeal.org
 
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Just for the record, my wife wants to clear some growth in the garden but it is smothered with bees, so it has been left.

Over the back fence is 55acres of wheat, across the road another 55 acres of wheat and not a single bee to be seen when walking the dogs around both. No need for bees to pollinate it.

I keep being told "no bees, no sparrows" so why is my garden full of them?

Den
 
@ Poledark I suspect you live in a fairly low EMR environment, since you clearly live in the countryside. Many parts of the UK are still "underserved" by wireless communications, unlike where I live. Try going to a high-EMR environment and then see how many bees and sparrows you get.
 
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