Bees at work: nice photos, but all is not well
I have been reading, also in posts by beekeepers on Steemit, about bee populations dying; not just honey bees, but all kinds of other (solitary) bees as well. This can have quite an environmental impact, and it also greatly sucks for the beekeepers who find many of their bees haven't survived the winter.
I don't think there's much you and I can do about this, besides planting some more flowers, and leaving the bees' nests alone. If you know of anything else we can do, please let me know.
I hope researchers find out what's wrong soon; there are many theories, but I haven't been able to find clear-cut answers yet. If you know of any, again, please let me know.
A few photos, as a tribute to bees:
All photos taken by me. I like bees.
It is obvious that pesticides play a very important (negative) role. For example also professor Randolf Menzel, one of the biggest bee experts worldwide, is convinced of the negative effects of neonicotinoids on bees. So we all should, wherever possible, avoid the use of pesticides and demand to restrict them from our governments.
Then single-crop farming and sterile gardens offer less and less food ressources for insects. We should let some areas in our gardens 'untidy', so that many wild flowers can grow and bees find places to nest (in my other comment I also wrote about nesting aids).
There is also a list of bee-friendly plants (in German, but I think self-explaining with scientific names of the plants).
Huge interests at play there, probably. Maybe even enough to stop follow-up research 8-(.
So sad that bees are disappearing! Have you ever housed bees? I use bee-houses by Bambeco http://www.bambeco.com/SearchResults.aspx?tSearch=bee
They are really easy to install and my bees seem to like them!
I have some. Though not the big nesting aid on top is preferable (there is too much wasted space), but the stones further down, because they are really solid (so they even protect against woodpeckers) and have holes of many different sizes (for many different kinds of bees). In Germany one can buy these 'nesting stones' here.
Oh wow! That's cool. Thanks for the recommendation!
something to be aware of is that many large stores like Home Depot and Safeway sell plants that have pesticides and chemicals on them that will kill bees. Some of these plants are even supposedly bee friendly yet the chemicals will kill them.
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Be-e Positive! Beautiful photos!
Thank you.
Fantastic photos of flowers, but especially the bees. I love bees. In my garden I always make sure there are plants just for them.
So do I, but I must admit that is partly because of lack of garden maintenance 8-).
meep
fantastic photos
Thank you.
That's sad ...I'm afraid that we will have some mechanical bees in the near future just like in that episode from "Black Mirror" link
Let's hope we can avoid that. I prefer real bees, and not just because they are photogenic 8-).
beautiful photos. It's a shame whats happening to the bees.