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

[Tracy MacShane]

On Fri, 2006-07-28 at 23:09 -0700, D. Reed wrote:
> 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
> pesticides....general paranoia about any bee *sigh*
> 
> /why yes, I do work in the bug room at a museum

I'm totally with you there, and I'm happy with wild bees myself. The
native bee in NZ is a pretty relaxed little beastie. 

But the more aggressive kind is not a comfortable thing to have in one's
backyard... and smoking them out, packing them up and moving them
elsewhere if their nest is underground would be *challenging*, to say
the least. It would also require equipment that only a beekeeper would
be likely to have. And normally they'll only do it if they're going to
get a new hive out of it. :-(