We have plenty of bumblebees feeding on all our flowering trees and shrubs (soft
fruit, top fruit, Eleagnus, willows etc.), social wasps, and a healthy hive of
bees - a feral swarm that moved into an old hive last year.
Farming around us is grass-based cattle and sheep, no tillage.
There is not much pesticide use, except some ignorant people spray roadside
margins, yards etc. and some farmers
spray roundup prior to ploughing-up and re-seeding grassland. Neonicotinoids
are thankfully not an issue around us. The evidence that this class of
pesticides is at least in part responsible for CCD is pretty damning though.
Ute in mid-West Ireland.
Saturday, May 5, 2012, 11:38:15 PM, you wrote:
JDh> I'd say about 20 % of the bumble bees we had last year at this time. No
JDh> honey bees at all and even wasps that seem to normally pollinate our goose
JDh> berries are extremely rare.
JDh> That is not all. 5 days ago three (3) swallows arrived here out of the 70 or
JDh> so that left the farm last September. Four weeks late and no others have
JDh> come back so far.
JDh> John in SW Ireland
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