I love what bees do and get very concerned when I hear about their population declining but I'm not going to lie, they scare the crap out of me and those photos gave me the heebie jeebies.
Hi, great topic!!!
What do you think about that?
http://handpen.com/Bio/bees.html
clothianidin is a huge issue and i havent seen anything that makes me disagree that it is a part of the die off. But there are also hive pests, too...the small hive beetle and the varroa mite, and the nosema virus. These are big issues, too. But these latter things are things you can observe in the hive and they build up.
When a whole group of workers bees leave for the day and none return, or when there are dead bees piled up in the front of the hive, well, there ya go.
It is absolutely criminal to me what Monsanto, Bayer, Dow and others are doing to our food supply and our environment. The GMO Bt corn is nothing but a horrible failure, and the repeated application of Roundup on all the Roundup ready GMO soy, corn, alfalfa, canola, and sugar beets is poisoning all of us. The bees are the canary in the coal mine, IMHO. BigFood needs to be reined in and we all need to educate ourselves on what we are putting on our tables.
I love bees! I'm not afraid of them at all. I've never been stung. they seem to like me, & I like them for some reason.
so great of you to do your part to help them, CobaltBlu!
Thanks frick!!!
Love this thread!
My dad is a beekeeper, I've grown up with them, and LOVE them!
Lol, I always take it personally when people says bees are 'mean', or confuse them with wasps/yellowjackets/etc. It's like having a family member insulted
Thats great, MrsK!!
I am hoping that this thread will cure me of my HUGE fear of bees. I'm absolutely terrified of them. Even hearing their buzzing scares me. I am thankful for their honey though. I do love me some honey! Anyway, keep the positive bee trivia coming.
Aww.....I know the buzzing can be intimidating, and of course it hurts when they sting
But a worker bee out foraging just wants to get back to her sisters safely. By the time she has a lot of nectar in her, it is hard for her to sting.
A worker bee lives 3-6 weeks...when they emerge from their cell, they first crawl around and get used to the layout of the hive and the smell. Then they do housekeeping chores, like fanning the hive to regulate temperature and humidity, feeding the young, capping cells with honey and pollen in them, attending the queen, etc. Then when she is a little older she will take some short flights outside the hive to familiarize herself with the layout. Eventually she will go out and begin to forage for nectar, collecting pollen and pollinating flowers along her way...
Foraging is so dangerous, of course, so they send out the older ones to do it. They can get picked off by birds, sprayed with pesticides, get caught in the rain, etc....after a couple of weeks of flying several miles a day, the worker bee reaches the end of her life, usually her wings are tattered and she dies.
So, when you see a bee, you are seeing a hard working little creature who has already learned the skills of the hive, as well as how to find food and return home. She knows the earth is round, she knows how to convert distance into time and and she knows how to tell her sisters back home how far away the best nectar is in relation to the angle of the sun in the sky.