SD on 4/5/2007 at 05:16

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There wouldn't be a food shortage necessarily. Most cereal crops (corn, wheat, barley etc) are wind pollinated.

TBE on 4/5/2007 at 08:45

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Was you ever hit by a dead bee?

Fingernail on 4/5/2007 at 10:20

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finally, we've found a way to combat the MASSIVE BEES

Trappin on 4/5/2007 at 16:54

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I live in Nor Cal and a friend of mine has close to 50 supers - I think a super is just a white bee box(hive) stacked two or more high - beekeepers just call them supers and triples blah blah. For folks that have never seen the inside of a bee box, they look just like a CD case with slots that hold CD jewel cases. The bee box have slots that will hold the frames (wood frame with plastic hexagonal insert) where the bees deposit wax and honey. During the summer keepers will either pull honey loaded frames and drop fresh new frames into the super or just add another frame loaded super to the top of the hive. Keepers must do this or the bees will outgrow the bee box and swarm> this is how the wild bee population is replenished.

Bee's are fascinating. In California during warm windless summer days the bees are so busy collecting pollen that they may stay out all night and not return to the hive to rest - they just catnap on a flower or leaf and then continue on working. Its funny, a dry northern wind ( relative to Chico, Ca.) really pisses off the bee's and they sting and harass the keepers (even after heavy smoking) but the same hive in the middle of a perfect day will ignore a keeper (no smoke) picking through the hive - even to the extent that the keepers are pulling loaded frames from a super, scraping the bees off the loaded frame with a putty knife or their gloved hands and then replacing the frames with clean new ones.

Here on the US west coast the large apiary firms move bee boxes up and down the coast. Beekeepers might be in California during march for almond pollination and a few other orchard type crops then move the bees up to Oregon/Washington for cranberries and other vine type crops. This is where I have to wonder about EM waves killing our little bee friends, some of these crops exist in fairly remote places with low cell tower rates per square mile.

> Certain crops really wear out the worker bees - I know when they work cranberries that the life spawn of the worker bees may drop by 30 percent or so.

The bee industry has been fighting the bee mite for a few years now. Keepers make blocks of sugary- medicine infused food that looks like peanut butter and cuts like cheddar cheese. Keepers wire cut this stuff and drop it into the supers.

Wild bee populations have been decimated by the bee mite and other natural causes which include a moth (brood moth?) that eats the wax(?) or honey(?) or attack the bee(?)


PS: When the bee's are really active and happy they ignore the keepers picking through the supers - on days like this my buddy will be wearing shorts with only the beekeeper hood, he told me the bees get angry from warm human breath which can trigger the bees to sting but otherwise he can carefully pick through the hive and not get stung UNLESS - while pulling a frame he accidentally smashes a bee(s) that are working in between the frames.

PSS: competent keepers will mark the top of the supers that have aggressive bees (sometimes a hive will just sound aggressive - certain pitch of buzzing) and come back later to pinch (kill) and replace the queens that spawn mean worker bees.

Carini on 4/5/2007 at 17:27

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Bees are on the what now?