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

[Paula Lieberman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "quietann" <quietann at gmail.com>


> On 7/29/06, Tracy MacShane <trix at queerscience.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>> 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. ...
>
> I live in Massachusetts, where there was massive rainstorms and flooding 
> in
> May that seem to have decimated the bee and wasp population.  (We had 14
> inches of rain in 3 days, over Mother's Day weekend, followed by several
> storms over the next few weeks that dumped 4 to 6 inches each.)  There are
> enough of these critters around that my garden plants got pollinated, but
> it's disturbing nonetheless.
>
> Also missing this year are dragonflies.  I have netting over my tomatoes 
> to

I've gotten a number of pictures of dragonflies in my yard, over down by the 
Shawsheen River (though maybe the numbers of them are down froml last year 
where route 3A crosses it, and over at the millpond behind Talbot Dam in 
North Billerica (a dam Thoreau complained about...   The numbers of them up 
here aren't down substantially that I've noted.. hmm, the true dragonflies, 
no, but the dragonfly-like insects that the wings fold over their backs, 
I've seen fewer of.  For that matter, some specific types of dragonfly might 
be less in number--large red ones (meadowhawk)  I haven't been seeing (they 
were notable for their boldness, I have digital camera video of one that 
hung on to my right thumb for quite a while... including (no images of ths 
my taking the camera strap off my right wrist over my hand, OVER the 
dragonfly...

> keep larger critters out, and am used to going out to rescue dragonflies
> from under the netting every day.  This year, I've only had one to rescue 
> so
> far.
>
> We tend to leave these guys alone unless they are (a) in the house or
> setting up a nest where they could get into the house, or (b) very
> aggressive.  We had some sort of solitary ground bee 2 summers ago that 
> was
> *nasty*.  I could not get within 20 feet of their holes without getting
> stung.

The bumblees that get used on tomatoes can't be that aggressive or tomato 
growers wouldn't be using them.