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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI The bee that everyone wants to save
datahack wrote 4 hours 30 min ago:
I do very much dislike that the concerns of the domesticated bee are
brushed aside in this piece, as they are quite legitimate.
It, of course, is trying to espouse that we protect the solitary and
other wild bees, and I agree with them about that. Itâs very, very
important.
Nevertheless, this is a case of both not either / or being the right
position. Why should we be advocating for one and not the other, or
really in fact all flying insects, especially given their recent
catastrophic declines.
pruetj wrote 6 hours 2 min ago:
Appreciate the write up! Iâve always wanted a hive on my property.
Iâve seen some carpenter bees and bumblebees at work around the
garden and this is giving me second thoughts about introducing more
competition for them via honeybees.
I think Iâll let nature take its course here and enjoy the natural
wild life.
ashwinnair99 wrote 6 hours 51 min ago:
Every few years there is one species that captures public attention and
gets all the conservation energy. Rarely the ones that need it most.
forinti wrote 8 hours 11 min ago:
In Brazil we have tiny native bees that don't sting. They make wax
tunnels and the colonies grow very very slowly. I've been watching one
for 20 years and it doesn't even seem to have doubled in size. They
have suffered a lot with deforestation.
throwaway_7274 wrote 11 hours 2 min ago:
does anyone else detect llm tone in this post?
smallstepforman wrote 11 hours 10 min ago:
As with all things commercial, my neighbour keeps 40 hives and extracts
too much honey in the autumn, resulting in desperate hungry bees in the
spring that get very aggressive. If he left them more honey (less
profits), they wouldnt be as hungry or aggressive. The entire
neighbourhood suffers due to the antics of a single owner. Legally,
heâs within the council regulations so there is nothing we can do â¦
Its impossible to sit outside from 9am-6pm in April and May. Once there
is enough food, they calm down.
mapt wrote 10 hours 55 min ago:
"I'm going to start spraying imidacloprid if I keep getting stung"
ahhhhnoooo wrote 10 hours 0 min ago:
Generally, it's considered pretty unacceptable to destroy someone's
livestock.
And aggressive honeybees still rarely sting. They typically just
charge at you (which is annoying/disruptive)
cowsandmilk wrote 8 hours 9 min ago:
For livestock other than bees, it is considered unacceptable to
starve them or have them attack your neighbors.
j_bum wrote 10 hours 59 min ago:
Have you ever talked to him about this?
QuaArbiter wrote 11 hours 29 min ago:
Humble recommendation; [1] (Wildlife film-maker Martin Dohrn is bee
obsessed. He has found over 60 species in his Bristol garden and sets
out to film them, with mind-blowing results.)
URI [1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002t686/my-garden-of-a...
thavalai wrote 8 hours 29 min ago:
In case any one else runs into a "this video is not available outside
the UK" message, I'm able to see it here:
URI [1]: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/my-garden-thousand-bees-abou...
jibbit wrote 11 hours 17 min ago:
This was genuinely one of the best bits of TV i've ever seen
mauvehaus wrote 12 hours 7 min ago:
Highly recommend the writing of Dave Goulson[0] about bees and meadow
ecosystems more broadly. Iâve read A Buzz in the Meadow and A Sting
in the Tale and enjoyed them both.
[0]
URI [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/323591.Dave_Goulson
anthonyIPH wrote 12 hours 38 min ago:
Just last weekend my kids were climbing the magnolia tree on the side
of my house and I noticed dozens of little bees flying along the ground
underneath it. My kids were a little freaked out even though I
reassured them that the bees almost definitely wouldn't sting them.
I also noticed dozens of tiny half centimeter diameter holes in the
ground under that magnolia tree which I guessed were little bee
burrows. This sent me down a rabbit hole of trying to identify what
type of bee these were. Long story short, there are way too many types
of bees (30,000+ according to my research) for a non specialist like
me to be able to pinpoint a species. But whatever type of bee
(miner/sweat) they are going to go absolutely nuts when that magnolia
tree blooms in the next couple weeks.
Aboutplants wrote 13 hours 39 min ago:
My wife has planted an over abundance of native plants on our property,
eliminating 60-70% of the turf grass. The resulting bee population
increase has been phenomenal to watch. Also, using leafs dropped in the
fall as mulch provides the habitat for lightning bugs and the
population boom experienced in the years after we started doing this
has exploded. Summer nights are magical again
danybittel wrote 14 hours 25 min ago:
Very well said, also many other non bees are also pollinators, such as
butterflies, some beetles.. even ants. Any flower is a hotspot of life.
Tangential, have a look at a Gaussian splat of a honeybee I recently
captured:
URI [1]: https://superspl.at/scene/3ae6a716
7952 wrote 6 hours 52 min ago:
That is spectacular. Can you keep the camera still and let the bee
fly?
arn3n wrote 9 hours 55 min ago:
Thatâs amazing! How did you capture it at that resolution?
moebrowne wrote 16 hours 25 min ago:
> The honeybee is not endangered. It never was.
There are several severe threats to honey bees which without human
intervention would cause a significant number of hives to be lost.
There's the varroa mite and the things it carries like deformed wing
virus, then there is the increasingly prevalent Asian hornet which
European honey bees are unable to deal with, and colony collapse
disorder where the bees literally disappear for reasons we current
don't understand, and climate change is causing colonies to starve over
the winter.
Honey bees are not going extinct tomorrow but they are not doing well.
t-3 wrote 7 hours 9 min ago:
Wild honeybees adapt to deal with mites. What they struggle with are
insecticides and monoculture deserts. Domesticated varieties that
have been selected for productivity and placidity are the ones that
haven't quickly adapted to the introduction of parasites, diseases,
and predators, because they don't have to, as the humans worry about
those problems.
jojobas wrote 12 hours 56 min ago:
To add, most farming relies precisely on honeybee for pollination,
and losing 2/3 of them would be quite devastating.
Of course nobody cars about wild bees, our lives don't depend on them
nearly as much.
tomjakubowski wrote 3 hours 14 min ago:
Is that really true? My layman's understanding was that ~10-20% of
the calories in a typical American diet comes from crops which need
pollinators: grains (which feed livestock too), legumes, root
vegetables, leafy greens, mostly can be grown without them, using
self pollination or wind pollination.
jojobas wrote 1 hour 14 min ago:
I mean, of those that do require insect pollination. Apples/pear
family, almonds/cherries/plums, cucumbers/melons, some others in
seed production (carrots). There are only few examples where
non-honeybee pollinators are needed, like tomatoes in greenhouses
(otherwise wind is enough).
bombcar wrote 12 hours 44 min ago:
It may be that agricultural mechanization requires honeybees simply
because they're the ones we can farm themselves.
TazeTSchnitzel wrote 13 hours 27 min ago:
There's also the massive problem of fake honey (i.e. manufactured
sugar syrup illegally sold as honey), which is much cheaper than real
honey and pushing actual beekeepers out of the market.
bregma wrote 13 hours 47 min ago:
Honeybees are livestock. They're no more endangered than chickens or
cows. If we need more, we just breed more.
In most places honeybees are raised they couldn't even survive in the
wild. Just like cows and chickens and pigs. As with most livestock,
without human intervention they would probably be wiped out.
neonnoodle wrote 12 hours 54 min ago:
âBreeding moreâ bees is not as trivial as raising other
animals, because bee reproduction depends on hive stability. Other
animals are kept fully enclosed in captivity and can be
artificially inseminated in some cases. Bees are semi-wild and have
to be free to leave the hive to forage, and if they donât return
or if the hive collapses, you canât âbreed more.â
eszed wrote 11 hours 2 min ago:
Fun fact: queen bees can be artificially inseminated, and most
commercial queens are. Beekeepers prefer naturally-inseminated
queens, because they're stronger, but "nature" can't keep up with
commercial demand.
You're correct about "breeding more" not being trivial, but they
do it on an industrial scale. In really broad strokes: in late
winter, in preparation for pollination season, they feed their
hives intensively (with sugar syrup) and add extra brood boxes
for the queens to fill with eggs. Then they split the hives,
leaving the old queen in one box, and adding new queens to the
box(es) they take off. Voila! Double (or more) the hives.
Pollination is where commercial beekeepers earn their living, by
renting out hives of bees to farmers. Honey production is not
necessarily an afterthought, even though it doesn't really turn a
profit - it's worth doing because you'll be putting the bees on
nectar flows for the summer, anyway, so you won't have to feed
them, and extracting (some of) the honey covers transportation
costs - but all the money's in pollination.
I could keep going and going - queen production and hive
splitting are fascinating topics on their own - but I'll stop
before I risk boring people with an over-long comment. I have
commercial beekeepers in my family, and I've worked (summer /
vacation jobs, when I was a kid) every part of the process.
(This is all in a USA-ag context. Beekeeping is - very! -
different in other parts of the world.)
dv_dt wrote 13 hours 10 min ago:
If humans didn't manage risks to livestock on an industry scale
they would be at risk. It requires a constant investment from both
commercial industry and government. Activities like the dept of
agriculture and university ag depts have been really so good at
what they do. Its like the rest of civilization has forgotten what
it takes and the costs involved if we neglect the investment.
Agriculture and livestock is just one foundational civilization
technology where we have forgotten the significance of
bombcar wrote 12 hours 45 min ago:
What is considered livestock varies over time - chickens range
from "free range and can survive in the wild" to "so fat they
can't live". One guess as to which is the most common by numbers
- one reason that if you do decide to have a backyard flock, go
with something "more natural".
More dangerous in all these is the monoculture - a hundred years
ago we would have a wide range of crops and livestock; now 90% of
meat chickens are probably the same genetically; similar with
cows and bananas and corn and rice and pigs, etc. That sets us up
for a "wipe out 90% of chickens" risk.
Loughla wrote 9 hours 32 min ago:
Just a fun fact. We're pretty close to the anniversary of the
dust bowl. . . Which was driven by farming practices to raise
monoculture crops.
No purpose to this other than this is a very long term problem
that, I believe, will bite us in the ass at some point.
dv_dt wrote 9 hours 33 min ago:
Monoculture is definitely a risk, one exacerbated by megacorps
and overly corporatized industry - but if you look at the
history of ag departments they have introduced multiple
variants and variations across crops and animals time and time
again. They also work with smaller growers in communities in
many ways - natural pest controls consultations for example
cachius wrote 15 hours 0 min ago:
Now think of bumble and other wild bees who catch the mites from the
blossoms but get no treatment with formic or oxalic acid.
aziaziazi wrote 15 hours 51 min ago:
Humans also face severe treats and are not doing well but are not
going extinct tomorrow. Honeybees seems to only decline in North
America, especially the USA, but as you said itâs human
intervention that keeps their population booming years after years.
Perhaps a decline wouldnât be so problematic it doesnât go to
extinction? A decline in chickens population wouldnât lead to
extinction, to elaborate on the funny authors take:
> Promoting honeybee hives to save pollinators is roughly the
equivalent to building more chicken farms to save bird biodiversity
The other problems you raise are important but are also a treat to
others bee species and insects.
URI [1]: https://earth.org/data_visualization/bees-are-not-declining-...
b3ing wrote 13 hours 42 min ago:
Honeybees arenât native to North America
mig39 wrote 9 hours 2 min ago:
Neither are earthworms.
hammock wrote 9 hours 12 min ago:
Fascinating fact. Begs the question what pollinated agriculture
(squash, tomatoes, peppers, berries etc) prior to the
introduction of the honeybee and the equally fascinating answer
is that there were many species but all of them were SOLITARY and
NON-HIVE DWELLING!
bombcar wrote 12 hours 49 min ago:
Neither are humans, apparently.
I wonder if it would be possible to experiment a bit - ban
honeybee hives in a 10 mile square radius, or perhaps in that
area that bans all radio transmitters. See what happens.
matt_kantor wrote 11 hours 19 min ago:
> Neither are humans, apparently.
That depends on how you draw the line. Most would consider
buffalo[0] to be native to North America, but they arrived less
than 200000 years ago. If you go far enough back, no life is
native to anywhere except wherever abiogenesis occurred.
[0]:
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison
b3ing wrote 6 hours 52 min ago:
Camels originated in North America, interesting enough. Yeah,
we could go on for hours
birdfood wrote 17 hours 19 min ago:
I have a couple of hives of the local native tetragonula stingless bee
in my yard. It does feel quite special to see them foraging and
returning laden with various brightly coloured balls of pollen on their
legs. Iâve managed to propagate two hives, one I split and gave to my
childrenâs kindy, the other started from a swarm which attacked one
of my hives. I read that if you move the hive and put an empty one in
its place the swarm might colonise it and that is exactly what happened
and a friend now has that one. We also get a lot of blue banded bee and
teddy bear bees in our garden. Itâs comparatively uncommon to see a
honey bee.
malikolivier wrote 17 hours 20 min ago:
Such issues is what brought us to keep native honeybee species where I
live, and not the domestic Western bees.
The productivity may not be as high as the domestic bee, but we still
get honey and it's very good!
You would also notice the difference in taste. Apis mellifera honey is
usually sweeter than the Asian honeybee, and not as prone to
fermentation. A slightly fermented honey is also super good!
GiraffeNecktie wrote 17 hours 21 min ago:
The author lost me at the end when they said to stop pulling up
dandelions. Dandelions are not a native species (at least in North
America) and are not a good food source for native pollinators.
Flook wrote 15 hours 59 min ago:
Hey, I'm the author. I'm indeed writing from Hungary, Europe, and
here dandelions are native, and they are one of the main sources of
early food, especially for the bumblebee queens and the mining bees.
My lawn is littered with dandelions and there is so much activity on
them. The other main food source at this moment is plum blossoms, but
those are a favorite of the honey bees and they often aggressively
chase away the native bees. So most of the native bees are therefore
forced to keep lower to the ground and make use of the dandelions,
daisies and violets. I see all my neighbors pulling out the
dandelions, and thereby removing the only really abundant food source
the native bees have left. That's why I said to stop pulling up
dandelions.
apricot13 wrote 14 hours 49 min ago:
does this apply in the UK as well? I'm a fan of dandelions but
everyone is determined to pull them out of our lawn but me!
but then I've also been told by a local bee keeper that the whole
plant flowers for the bees policy isn't a good idea since that's
how mites and other nasties can be transferred between hives?
Flook wrote 13 hours 56 min ago:
Yes, there are about 250 native species of dandelions in the UK.
That is how the mites are transferred. They hitch a ride when a
bee leaves the hive, drop off at a flower and wait for another
bee to be taken to that hive. But the thing is, there are about a
1000 different kinds of mites (that we know off) and most of them
are beneficial to the bees, not harmful. There are 3 big groups.
The ones like the Varroa who will feed on the bees, there is a
group that will neither harm nor help the bees, and is only after
stealing the food the bees bring in, and there is a group who
will clean the hives, eating the waste and harmful organisms. A
healthy nest of bees isn't really at risk of the harmful mites.
It's only when they get stressed or sick that there is the risk
of the Varroa mites to wipe out the colony.
So it comes down to human intervention for the most part. When a
bee-keeper sees a Varroa mite, he will treat the hive, and by
doing so, also kills off the mites that keep the hive healthy and
disturbing the balance. As a result, the bees, who are already
living in an unnatural population density, get even more weak,
since there is nothing left to keep the nest clean. The Varroa
mites, if they find their way into the hive again, have now an
easy prey and can easily wipe out an entire hive.
benrutter wrote 16 hours 37 min ago:
I think someone else has already pointed out that the author is
writing from a non US perspective.
But at the risk of being patronising, I wanted to say that we should
all try to resist the "the author lost me when" reaction. I catch
myself doing this too, but I don't think it's useful.
Reading an article isn't a competition where you win if you don't get
your mind changed. Someone might have valid thoughts and opinions
even if there are details of the article you disagree with.
Especially in the current climate, I feel like we could benefit from
being a little more charitable.
borski wrote 16 hours 29 min ago:
Thank you for saying this. Itâs hard, but Iâve learned itâs a
lot better to approach new information (and thus, articles) with
curiosity, rather than skepticism.
defrost wrote 17 hours 16 min ago:
Dandelions are a native species in Europe, the author is blogging
from the southwest of Hungary.
Hopefully you are now less lost.
MostlyStable wrote 18 hours 48 min ago:
My wife and I had wanted honey bees for a long time, but when we
finally moved to a place that we could have had them, we noticed that
we regularly saw at least 5 native bee species. We decided not to get a
hive since they compete for resources and can spread disease. Given
that there are neighbors that have them within about a mile, and that
either those or feral colonies are close enough that we also see honey
bees around, I'm not sure how much difference it makes, but we don't
regret the decision.
FarmerPotato wrote 8 hours 2 min ago:
For North America, you can read much about native bees (and more) at
Xerces.org.
They have many regional habitat-planting guides. Two books covering
native bees:
Managing Alternative Pollinators
Attracting Native Pollinators
C'mon, you know you want to join a 'Society for Invertebrate
Preservation'.
bregma wrote 13 hours 43 min ago:
There's not as much crossover as you might think. In North America
the native pollinators are adapted to the native plants and can't
even pollinate the introduced eurasian ones. And it goes the other
way: honeybees can't pollinate the native plants, only the introduced
eurasian ones.
If course, if you're in Europe, honeybees are the native pollinators.
At least around the Mediterranean.
MostlyStable wrote 6 hours 27 min ago:
While I haven't done an intense study of it, I very frequently see
multiple bee species, natives and honey bees, on the same flowers.
This includes things like raspberries, mint, dandelions, various
fruit blossoms, as well as vegetables. I'm sure there is
specialization in at least some of the natives, but some of them,
the bumblebees especially (or maybe that's just because they are
bigger and easier to see), seem to be pretty generalist foragers
much like the honey bees
pfdietz wrote 11 hours 21 min ago:
So, what you're saying is that honeybees are facilitating the
spread of invasive plants in North America? Seems like a definite
negative.
adolph wrote 6 hours 45 min ago:
See also earthworms facilitating spread of invasives:
Invasive species of earthworms from the suborder Lumbricina
have been
expanding their range in North America. . . . Their
introduction to North
America has had marked effects on the nutrient cycles and soil
profiles in
temperate forests. . . . Some species of trees and other plants
may be
incapable of surviving such changes in available nutrients.
This change in
the plant diversity in turn affects other organisms and often
leads to
increased invasions of other exotic species as well as overall
forest
decline. They are considered one of the most invasive animals
in the
Midwestern United States along with feral swine.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_earthworms_of_Nor...
chasil wrote 10 hours 28 min ago:
Those ships have literally sailed, centuries ago.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange
pfdietz wrote 10 hours 20 min ago:
Invasives are an ongoing and escalating problem.
mattmaroon wrote 5 hours 28 min ago:
Which is solid evidence that honey bees have little to do
with the problem.
pfdietz wrote 2 hours 4 min ago:
What a non sequitur.
justincormack wrote 12 hours 36 min ago:
We also have many wild bees in Europe.
2muchcoffeeman wrote 15 hours 39 min ago:
Can you âbuild coloniesâ for native species?
t-3 wrote 7 hours 16 min ago:
Most of the native bees/wasps/flies that are important for
pollination are solitary, but you can still help them with nesting
areas.
Mason bees can be relatively easy: drill some small holes in a post
and let it be. You can also get way more complicated with it. [1]
Bumblebee make nests for breeding, you can sometimes find nests in
birdhouses or in gaps of buildings, but they apparently usually go
for old mouse burrows. I've seen guides similar to the following,
but covering a nest of dried grass with a clay pot, with a buried
hose connecting the inside of the nest to the outside. [2] Planting
native flowers and shrubs can also provide habitat for many
insects.
URI [1]: https://colinpurrington.com/2019/05/guide-to-diy-mason-bee...
URI [2]: https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/20800500/BumbleBeeRe...
Modified3019 wrote 14 hours 57 min ago:
Yes, though you need to know what sort of nesting sites they like,
and what sources of food they need. Many native bees need certain
plants to get the nutritional profile they are adapted for, and
donât do so well on nothing but dandelions and typical ornamental
flowers. They also need food sources throughout their active time.
For mason and leaf cutter bees, a box sheltered from rain and
filled with Japanese knotweed tubes (donât grow it yourself,
itâs highly invasive) works well for âI like seeing solitary
bees around, but want minimum effortsâ. There are tons of videos
you can find on the subject.
Drilling various sized holes in wood blocks also often works. The
nice thing about âsolitaryâ bees (which are often quite
communal), is they donât have much of a drive to defend a nest,
and would much rather fly away than bite/poke you. Iâve walked
alfalfa fields full of them, and while the loud buzzing was a bit
disconcerting, they couldnât care less about me. Leafcutter bees
are used for alfalfa because they donât mind how alfalfa flowers
work mechanically. European Honeybees will just chew through the
base of the flower to get the nectar, avoiding pollination.
For other bees, there is highly likely to be a native bee
enthusiast group in your local area that can give guidance on
native flower mixes and possible setups for habitat.
Here in western Oregon, the hazelnut orchards on the sandy soil
near rivers have actually become a great nesting place for multiple
species of beautiful green metallic âsweatâ bees: [1] They like
the semi-compacted neutral to slightly alkaline sandy soil thatâs
clear of weeds, hence a long term orchard is perfect, especially as
weâve moved to softer insecticide chemistries that generally
preserve beneficial insects. Offhand I think I start seeing them
filling the ground with little holes in may when I start monitoring
for Filbertworm moths.
And donât forget bumblebees. While itâs a hated introduced weed
for growers, it turns out that Sharppoint Fluvellen in the fescue
grass fields is loved by bumblebees because it happily continues to
flower in the late summer/fall when everything else has dried up or
run itâs course.
URI [1]: https://blogs.oregonstate.edu/gardenecologylab/2017/11/13/...
ilamont wrote 4 hours 26 min ago:
> Japanese knotweed tubes (donât grow it yourself, itâs
highly invasive)
Last year I was lamenting to a neighbor that bamboo doesn't
survive the harsh winters where we live. He disputed that.
"There's some growing down the road, next to the ditch," he said.
"It comes back every year. It's everywhere."
I was wondering what the heck he was talking about and then I
realized it was Japanese knotweed. The segmented branches do look
like thin bamboo, and he claimed that at one time it was sold at
the local garden center as "bamboo."
chongli wrote 15 hours 24 min ago:
You just need to supply the native plants they prefer to pollinate,
theyâll do the rest. If youâre wondering about whether you can
harvest honey from them, I donât think so. Most native pollinator
species donât produce honey.
Bumblebees do produce a kind of honey, but itâs much thinner and
less concentrated than proper honey (which has had most of the
water evaporated off by the wing beats of the bees).
bombcar wrote 12 hours 39 min ago:
A thousand years of effort might be able to "domesticate" the
bumblebee and make it produce something akin to usable amounts of
honey - but unlikely to be worth it.
t-3 wrote 7 hours 14 min ago:
Bumblebees are being "domesticated" to some extent, for
pollinating greenhouses, but they're used as labor animals
rather than food.
gus_massa wrote 11 hours 12 min ago:
Someone domesticated foxes in 20 years [1] , so perhaps it's
possible to domesticate bumblebee in a few decades - but
unlikely to be worth it.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox
Joel_Mckay wrote 18 hours 2 min ago:
The mite has already hit most wild populations hard, and tending
hives requires quite a bit of time to learn. Planting local wild
flowers is often helpful, and requires just a few minutes. =3
skyberrys wrote 18 hours 49 min ago:
My garden is full of fleabane flowers in heaping piles. I wonder if
that helps native pollinators or if I am providing flowers for honey
bees instead.
Joel_Mckay wrote 18 hours 9 min ago:
Planting a variety of local wild flowers that bloom at different
times over summer is the best assistance people can offer the little
creatures. Best regards, =3
skyberrys wrote 3 hours 44 min ago:
I actually plant local wildflowers all around the public paths near
me, those get much better sunlight than my own garden. I've managed
to plant so many golden poppies now that I frequently see strangers
stopping to photograph them, I feel so happy when I see it. I had a
great patch of lupines going too but some sort of aphid got loose
in the thick patch and killed them all. I was so sad.
I try to plant other types of flowers in my own garden, it's just
that I have 1000's of fleabane and like 200 others, my little
corner seems to be perfect for fleabane to thrive.
nelsondev wrote 19 hours 30 min ago:
Some carpenter bees moved into my roof overhang. Last year it was two,
this year itâs closer to 10. I like them, the only problem is they
burrow into my house and leave little piles of sawdust behind.
There is plenty of old fencing, a stack of logs, but they like my
house.
doodlebugging wrote 19 hours 1 min ago:
Give them another option after they vacate the nest in the fall. You
likely have the materials that they would use but they are not in
prime locations for carpenter bee nests so they choose your home with
a nice morning sun exposure and pre-existing nests. [0]
[0] [1] I have carpenter bees, mason bees, bumblebees, honeybees,
wasps, etc including bees of every size. I also have planted my
property in native plants and wildflowers to make sure these native
insects have a place to hang out. I provide water for insects and
wandering animals using washtubs with stacked rocks and solar powered
fountains to discourage algae. I think that you could improve your
chances of keeping the bees without them destroying your siding or
trim if you follow the guidance about bee house placement.
You can make a bee house block or buy one that will attract multiple
native bees and they will use it for years. Here is one option with
additional info about carpenter bees.[1] [2] The holes in the bee
house need to be about 1/2" (12-13mm) if you are attracting carpenter
bees. For mason or orchard bees they should be smaller, 3/16" to
5/16" (5-7mm).
URI [1]: https://gardenbetty.com/carpenter-bees/
URI [2]: https://www.thewallednursery.com/do-carpenter-bee-houses-wor...
Findecanor wrote 19 hours 10 min ago:
In my neighbourhood it has become popular to build "bee hotels" to
have in the garden. They are commonly built by cutting logs into
lengths, stacking them up and drilling multiple holes in one end of
each log, each hole sized just enough for a wild bee to enter.
However, the holes need to be deep enough for the bees to be safe
from bee-eating birds. Otherwise, the log will instead function as a
bee trap, allowing a bird to pick off one helpless bee after the
other.
adzm wrote 19 hours 27 min ago:
I actually just put some wood in the backyard for them so they can
chill out there and they stopped burrowing in my house and porch etc.
I'm still not sure why they stopped rather than just do both, but I
kept patching up their holes so maybe we have an understanding
somehow.
JumpCrisscross wrote 20 hours 7 min ago:
TL; DR Honeybees arenât native to the Americas. Bumblebees are. And
bumblebees get outcompeted by honeybees. Thatâs terrible, because
bumblebees promote plant biodiversity in a way generalist honeybees do
not. Putting a honeybee hive in your yard or on your balcony is fine.
But itâs agriculture, not conservation.
DeathArrow wrote 16 hours 52 min ago:
The author is Hungarian, he isn't talking especially about the
Americas, but he has a more general stance.
Joel_Mckay wrote 18 hours 19 min ago:
There are lots of native bees getting wiped out by Varroa destructor
carried viral infections. The imported hybrids used in agriculture
are more productive, and are currently being bred to have the
desirable trait of cleaning/nibbling the legs off mites.
Bumblebees do just fine in most places, as they go after my geraniums
like a fool with a hole-punch every year. We have several local
variety, and they are an important part of the ecosystem.
The mite & foulbrood damage means most agriculture businesses
euthanize hives when a problem becomes obvious. Hence why they also
over-produce queens, as people know most colonies will not make it
right now. The beekeeper community are some of the kindest folk you
will ever meet, and people are doing their best given the situation.
Have a wonderful day. =3
JumpCrisscross wrote 5 hours 50 min ago:
Oh, to be clear, I have nothing against beekeepers. As I said,
itâs fine to have a backyard apiary. But itâs also important to
know that itâs having an impact on the local bumblebee
population. Depending on where you are, that could be fine or it
could be stressing an endangered species. (Iâm in the Greater
Yellowstone Ecosystem. Weâre advised to avoid honeybees.)
cachius wrote 14 hours 53 min ago:
What's with geraniums? I remember they look nice but donât smell.
devilbunny wrote 12 hours 6 min ago:
They smell like carrots when you break the fading blooms off,
they tolerate high heat and full sun, and they are pretty.
Flowers for gardens, not arrangements.
Joel_Mckay wrote 13 hours 46 min ago:
Geraniums do well controlling invasive beetles, and local humming
birds also seem pleased. Some of the smaller flower variety are
pleasantly scented, and easy to clone. However, it is not a good
plant choice for people with pets.
Mustard (Sinapis alba) is nice if you like pleasant smelling
little yellow flowers, low-effort resilient plants, and spicy
food. =3
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