Where have the bees gone this year?

[nomade]

I have a plot on an allotment in "Greater London" I am cultivating for the 2nd year only after clearing it to a large extent from the brambles it was covered in.

I have dedicated the plot's surface for a significant part to nectar producing flowers, among those that most attract bees or bumble bees.

To my amazement I can't see any bees there even on the sunniest and warmest days...Another insect loving person on the same allotment has lots of nectar flowers on her plot and no bees are to be seen there either...

This is very worrying. I remember last year nectar producing plants buzzing with bees on the same allotment.

What is going on? It is very worrying.

Does anyone know? Does anyone have the latest news on bee populations in Britain this year?

 

[beachlover]

I am in the same situation as you in having a lottie down here.
I am growing much the same sort of stuff as last year, but so far there really seems only to be a fraction of the number of bees about when compared to last year.

 

[Scots_Charles_River]

I have stacks bizzzy about an evergreen hedge and my daisies, clover and garden plants. I have deliberately not cut the grass since may. It's pretty short anyway. Don't want to upset the garden a la 'The Happening'. I also don't cut off flowers as after watching the 'Silence of the Bees' whilst covering a biology class, I was shocked.

Nick

 

[FGYT]

Wahtched a Prog on Discovery the other day about hte World Wide colapse of Bee populations as much as 80% in some places in USA in the last year or so

looks like an online version here
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/silence-of-the-bees/introduction/38/

the problem is called CCD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder

they showed a area in China where the bees got wiped out by chemicals and they have to hand polinate every blossom of the areas pear trees

ATB

Duncan

 

[spamel]

I saw loads in a small bush outside a customers house last week, and was surprised to see two different types of bee working the same patch without scrapping. One was the traditional big fat bumblebee type, the other was smaller with a white band around its' abdomen. In a bush about the same size as a standard door, there must have been twenty or thirty bees. It was great to watch.

 

[Toddy]

My garden is full of them too
I don't know what is happening down your way nomade but I really hope the problem resolves and doesn't travel northwards
I like the bees bustling about........and honey and beeswax and the fruit and flowers they polinate.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[slowworm]

I have a plot on an allotment in "Greater London" I am cultivating for the 2nd year only after clearing it to a large extent from the brambles it was covered in

I'm not that far from Sutton and our garden is full of all sorts of bees. There's a bumble bee nest in our roof, all sorts of bumble bees, mining bees etc in the garden and just last week I noticed our hebes crawling with honey bees.

 

[chickenofthewoods]

This may seem like a daft question, but seeing as you're in a urban environment are there any mobile phone masts or transmitters near your allotments? I have beekeeping friends on another forum who've been observing that bees dislike mobile phones (seriously!) and there's a theory that the signals emitted seriously disturbs them in some way. If a mobile phone is placed on top of a hive they will avoid returning to it until it's removed - I imagine wi-fi computer technology could have the same effect too. If your area has a high density of these things it could be one cause.

 

[rik_uk3]

I had few bees last summer, but a lot of wasps?

Its not just bees going, the butterfly and moth population is shrinking too

 

[Cobweb]

Loadsa bees here, all sorts and quite a few butterflies... More than last year.

 

[Rebel]

I think that there have been less bees this month than usual in my area, but last month they were at what seemed to be normal levels.

I had noticed that there weren't many around because I look out for them when my courgettes and other flowering vegetables need pollinating. The weather has been pretty good and there are usually loads of them around on my allotment, especially when things are flowering.

 

[Rebel]

Sorry double post - the server is playing funny tricks on me.

 

[jojo]

It the same here in my bit of Suffolk, I was in the garden just now, I couldn't see any bees, or bumblebees, or butterflies, although there were a few hover flies There are been very few around and it's not because the garden is ultra tidy, or even just tidy! Sad really.

 

[wolfshead]

There was a piece on the box this morning, apparently there is some sort of virus going round in Beeland that's kicking them to bits, I didn't catch it all cos' I was going to work

 

[dommyracer]

It would appear that a large amount of bees has been stolen by the someone in Canada.....


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7482609.stm

 

[JohnC]

Or its Davros, see Dr Who....

 

[chickenofthewoods]

The virus is called Varroa, and it's not good

http://www.defra.gov.uk/hort/Bees/Varroa/index.htm

 

[gregorach]

Varroa isn't a virus, it's a parasitic mite (as it says in the first sentence of the page you linked to), and it's been a problem for bee-keepers for many years. I am not aware that the current bee disappearances have been definitely linked to the varroa mite.

 

[chickenofthewoods]

No indeed, you are right. Not the mite itself, but this:

Varroa jacobsoni thrives by passing viruses from bee to bee and weakening their immune systems. The mite can wipe out a colony of 50,000 bees inside three years.

 

[locum76]

varroa isn't a problem for beekeepers these days if you manage your hives reaasonably well. On a happy note we lost 4 out of six hives over the winter (mainly due to rubbish breeding conditions last year) but two have been filled by random swarms this year so we're effortlessly back up to four!