[LMB] (chat) Bees! or, Life Imitates Art. Again.

[Paula Lieberman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "D. Reed" <teluekh at yahoo.com>


> Feral bees are crucial pollinators!
>
> Not even necessarily honey bees, but there's thousands
> of species of bees, and most of them are on the
> decline due to a whole bunch of factors. Even
> cultivated honeybees are having lots of trouble.
> Intensive agriculture, spraying open flowers with

I may have given a wrong impression below, the apple tree spraying gets done 
after blossoming's over to avoid poisoning bees.  I've noticed a lot fewer 
butterflies and bees this summer than last summer--earlier in the year there 
were a lot of differnt types of bees, but now most of insects flying around 
my gone-wild oregano (which is flowering) are large black flying insects 
mostly, with some flying larger orangey insects, and many fewer bees and 
butterflies than than year, or even earlier this year.

The bees and butterflies were thicker last year in my memory, for one thing, 
bees bouncing into and off of butterlies was something that was a common 
occurrence, and there's been a lot less of it lass year.  Bumblebees 
especially flew into butterflies, untterly unconcerned about collisions. 
Oddly, the butterfly that got the most affected, was a swallowtail, which 
is -larger- than most of the other butterflied bonked into by bees....

> pesticides....general paranoia about any bee *sigh*
>
> /why yes, I do work in the bug room at a museum
>
> --- Paula Lieberman <paal at gis.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Tracy MacShane" <trix at queerscience.net>
>>
>>
>> > So, what *are* ground bees? I presume they're not
>> honey bees that a
>> > local beekeeper could harvest? Because that would
>> be the best option, if
>> > they are.
>>
>> There's a specific species of bumblebee that
>> pollinates tomatoes!
>>
>> Actually, there are some major concerns these days
>> about bee well-being, the
>> European honeybees brought to the USA as pollinating
>> insects, are majorly in
>> decline these days, between some parasite that
>> weakens them and disease--the
>> combination of them has been causing major bee
>> die-offs.  There is a non-bee
>> insect that pollinated e.g. apple trees, BUT, it
>> lays its eggs at the same
>> time and the eggs hatch into larvae that become
>> worms in the apples..  so,
>> commercial orchards spray the trees afterward to
>> prevent infestation by the
>> worms
>>
>
>
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