bees are sweet

physicspirate

Well-known member
When I was a young lad I found a book about bee keeping at a garage sale and read it. I became fascinated with bees, but didn't have the tools, cash, or know-how to start a hive of my own. This week I've started two new hives, released the queens from their prisons, and have fed them delicious sugar syrup.

Now all I have to do is make sure they have enough feed until the flower get started, and they have some boxes to expand into later on. The last couple of days I've been sneaking out of the house to watch them fly in and out of the hive:X3:. What an awesome creature :)

I took a few pictures of them, this is the best shot I got right now.

IMG_0551 copy.webp
 
I did watch an interesting documentary about maintaining bees. And how bee keepers in California (if my memory serves me well) and most parts of the states they were seeing their bee population being killed off by foreign bees. Not sure if the problem still persists but they were shipping bees from the east coast and 90% of the bees never made it to the west coast dieing before they got there.
 
I did watch an interesting documentary about maintaining bees. And how bee keepers in California (if my memory serves me well) and most parts of the states they were seeing their bee population being killed off by foreign bees. Not sure if the problem still persists but they were shipping bees from the east coast and 90% of the bees never made it to the west coast dieing before they got there.

Yeah, bees are having quite a hard time lately. The varroa mite, and colony collapse disorder, which may be related to the varroa mite are probably the worst right now. Other than that, they have a number of other really harmful diseases that could wipe out a number of hives by the end of the season. Some of the bee keepers in my area used to do the commute because it was so profitable, but alot of them stopped that years ago when they started losing epic amounts of bees.

Bees are also very smart.

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled over an interesting article how bees try to defend themselves against the pesticide threat.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/04/honeybees-entomb-hives

The sad thing is that the strategy apparently doesn't work.

I gotta check this out, thanks for the link.
 
Well the entombing strategy does work ...but the levels of toxins occurring in nature are quite short of the toxins in a concentrated pesticide. Because of the amount of toxins, the normal steps bees take to isolate the toxins actually backfires. It is humans again mashing up the course of nature as usual that is the cause of this problem. It all boils down to unnatural exposure from things in volumes that only humans could have provided. Almost everything else the bees can survive. They made it this long (thousands of years) without problems until we threw a monkey wrench into their plan. We have altered their natural defense mechanism's effectiveness. Now anything we do will alter it. Pesticides...hurt the bees, controlling parasites...changes the colony. Raising africanized bees down south in the us near the mexican border...well I wont even get into my opinion on that.
 
<body><p>Its a curious thing to think that the disappearance of this humble little creature from the face of the earth could be the first domino in a mass extinction event.
 
<body><p>Its a curious thing to think that the disappearance of this humble little creature from the face of the earth could be the first domino in a mass extinction event.

Reports in from Downunder are showing bee numbers dropping off as well :eek: Was reading yesterday that numbers were dropping in New Zealand for apparently no obvious reason, they postulated climate change but no hard data to back that up.

Am heavily allergic to them but surprisingly not wasps as I discovered a couple of days ago.
 
<body><p>Climate change is the modern boogie man. We aren't hitting any highs or lows that honey bees haven't survived through before - the governments of the world tend to forget we're still coming out of a min-ice age. <p><br><p>Not to say I don't believe pollutants or chemicals can't be a contributor, but not climate change.
 
<body><p>Climate change is the modern boogie man. We aren't hitting any highs or lows that honey bees haven't survived through before - the governments of the world tend to forget we're still coming out of a min-ice age. <p><br><p>Not to say I don't believe pollutants or chemicals can't be a contributor, but not climate change.


See I'm going to avoid launching the beginning of a whole climate change debate here as they tend to get a bit heated (kaboomtish).
 
bees do provide critical pollination functions that we would be lost without.

It's very sad they are dying, I hope that science can find the reason, and help reverse it very soon.
 
I read an journal article saying that cell phone/wifi signals mess with the magnetite in their bodies and they get lost/sleep deprived. Smart phones vs. bees.
 
Oh yeah, heres a new picture of them that I took today. Some were outside the hive for a little while the sun was out.

My Bees:
beees.webp

A Bumble Bee looking for a hole to nest in by my bees:

IMG_0840 copy.webp
 
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