Subject: Re: Homeless Bees

From: [email-masked] (Pollinator)
Date: 11 Sep 1996 13:31:05 -0400

Note:  This original and response is crossposted to the beekeeping
newsgroup
and the bee list.

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Keith
Downing Mueller) writes in rec.gardens:

>
>Just got power back after Fran.
>
>There are hundreds of trees in our surrounding woods which have been 
>downed. AS a result, there are now bees everywhere. If you need bees come

>down here.
>
>Please bring ice and your own batteries
>--
>Keith Mueller                                       [email-masked]

   I hope you and yours are all well and safe.

   Unfortunately the hollow trees that feral honeybees prefer for their
homes, are the first to go in this kind of storm

   It would be a very tall order to get the bees established into new
homes
and settled down for winter.  Their disaster has already stressed them so
much, then to lose their brood (or what brood couldn't be transferred)
would
just add to it.

   Right now any open hive has little chance, as bees are robbing out each
other, and hornets and yellow jackets joining into the fray.  They have
little chance of survival.

   If there are hives that are not broken up, they may well survive and be
okay, but then you will get a round of aerial mosquito spraying.  After
Hugo,
the environmental "protectors" ignored the label directions and applied
insecticide on many warm sunny afternoons when bees were foraging on
goldenrod and asters.  The field bees just dropped, and the clusters back
at
the hives became too small to survive the winter.  Bumblebees and many
solitary bees also dropped where they were working.

   If they do aerial spraying, I would do everything within my power to
make
them obey the law, as expressed in label directions.  If the material is
toxic to bees; it will forbid application while bees are foraging.  Don't
let
them establish the times of application by guesswork, but by monitoring to
establish when bees actually are foraging.  There is no reason to compound
the disaster by doing additional damage to pollinators.

   Fran will impact your pollination picture for years to come.  This is
an
aspect of the disaster that is not often recognized.

    [email-masked]    Dave Green,  PO Box 1200,  Hemingway,  SC
29554

Practical Pollination Home Page            Dave & Janice Green
http://users.aol.com/pollinator/polpage1.html

    The opinions expressed here are not those of my boss.  She doesn't pay
much attention to my opinions either.