permaculture

[Jay Woods <woodsjaya@gmail.com>]

I was out in the sagebrush and Pinyon pines on Friday here in Nevada on the 
east slopes of the Sierra Nevada. The honey bees were working rabbit brush. 
It 
took a while to be sure that they were honey bees as the rabbit brush pollen 
was green.  Also there was a desert willow growing well which had been 
drilled 
by a wood pecker. There were house flies and honey bees working the holes for 
sap. There is plenty of evidence for leaf cutters. And there is usually a lot 
of bumble bees but not that day. They grow a lot of alfalfa around here and 
it 
is in bloom being worked by alkali bees. (Alkali bees also pollinate pears 
and 
onions well. Honey bees don't like either one because of high potassium 
chloride in the nectar I'm told.) The humming birds have pretty well given up 
for the year as we have snow at 7,000 feet. (I'm at 5,400 ft.)

On Sunday, September 29, 2013 01:45:47 AM Lawrence London wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 1:05 AM, Lawrence London 
<lfljvenaura@gmail.com>wrote:
> 
> Bees.
> Late winter/early Spring  2013 I saw about a dozen honey bees foraging in
> my fields. Since then I have not seen a single one, Zero. Rien, Nada; Zero
> bees on my property. This time of year I have a bumper crop of goldenrod in
> bloom, offering prime food for bees. Not one bee has been seen amongst the
> flowers. Growing up, I always assumed that bees were a fixture on the
> landscape and that
> good local honey would always be available and affordable in the grocery
> stores. Not so, it seems. Herbicides, nicotinoid fungicides, lack of
> diverse food sources for bees are all factors to blame for this.
> Will native honeybees every return? Wild bees? Successful commercial
> apairies? One wonders. I have seen large populations of bumblebees,
> carpenter bees, wasps and other alternative pollinating insects at work on
> my land this year. One wonders how long even those will be around. Is it
> just my region of N.C. or is this situation common throughout the U.S.?
> 
> LL
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