The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third
of US bee colonies did not survive the winter.
Alison Benjamin The Observer, Sunday 2 May 2010
Fears for crops as shock figures from America show scale of bee catastrophe
This article proposes an interesting approach to improving the health of our pollinators: reserve plots of land to grow wild, providing islands of habitat in our agricultural areas. These would provide the diversity of plants to support the bee population and the bees in turn would pollinate the surrounding areas.
http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/guest-column-a-low-tech-treatment-for-bee-plague/
I thought this was very cool! I’m looking forward to reading more about what a closer examination of the hives uncovers.
-Amanda
There’s an article on beekeeping on Salon!
It’s a pretty good article, I think, and to me captures some of the charm of the girls. There are a few slight inaccuracies, but not bad. There is a bit of awe at the swarm-catching, which most beekeepers find generally both easy and fun; I haven’t done it yet, so won’t comment, but it does sound nifty.
The discussion of CCD (colony collapse disorder) made a lot of sense, and fits in with much of what I’ve been reading lately and what seems likely to me.
Anyway- good article! Recommended!
-Amanda
I have just found this article on nectar, and it’s very informative- a pretty interesting insight into what the plants are doing, and what our bees are after when they do it. Cool!
And our bees are encountering a bit of a problem: yellow jackets. Justin has been reading up on wasps vs. honeybees, and we put the entrance reducers back in the hives a few days ago to help the girls fight off any such invaders. This morning, he also helped by squishing one with a stick! The narrowed hive entrance does seem to help the girls be able to defend the hive- rather like a fortress- and I’m going to look into some of the metal entrance bars and see if there are any that allow bees to pass but not the larger wasps. The smaller entrance will unfortunately make it harder for the girls to cool off the hives in summer’s heat- but our bottom boards have a layer of mesh with a plastic plate underneath (mainly for mite control approaches), and we can remove the plastic when it gets really warm. The other thing that helps is cracking the cover of the hive, though, and that would give the wasps another place to enter. Another thing to research, it seems!
We haven’t been in the hives except for the quick check for viable brood in a couple of weeks now, between uncooperative weather and various other things in our lives. Fortunately, the bees tend to prefer it that way… Still, I’d like to check several frames per hive soon! Maybe tomorrow night, assuming we have some weather cooperation at last.
-Amanda