[ExI] bees again

[BillK]

On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 9:01 PM, spike wrote:
> In my back yard, I noticed the minority bees are now the majority: the
> secondary pollinators which do about 5% of the pollinating, the
> ground-dwelling non-colonizers, are now in the majority.
>
> I have a job for all of you, if you are willing: go find a standard
> somewhere, something that you can make notes on date, time, weather
> conditions and bee counts.  I fear we have done something to reaaaally screw
> our bees this time, something really bad.  I need to know if it is a local
> phenomenon, something I can contact the city parks and grounds department,
> see if they are spraying something new and improved, or if it is widespread.
>

Well, it's still winter in England with night time 32F temperatures.
The nice weather girl has promised spring temperatures for later in
the week.  :)

But a bit of searching reports.......
Farmers have planted more almond trees in California as the price of
almonds has increased. Not many honeybee hives are permanent in
California, so most of the hives are imported just for the pollinating
seasons. There are reports that the bees might be spread too thin this
year due to the increased acreage and the increased price of renting
hives. This implies that the bees will probably not stray much outside
their orchards.

Officially nobody is reporting a disastrous shortage of bees this year.

BillK