In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.
The honey bees
System
Member Posts: 24 admin
This discussion was created from comments split from: Yellow jackets?.
Comments
Ref to my post in NBD's thread and not to highjack it, many speculations as to why the sudden swarms of and so many separate reports of the bees.
Folks are blaming the fireworks, in both noise and the smoke from setting them off. I doubt this myself.
A couple years ago a flatbed semi rolled into a ditch making too tight of a turn. Most of his load came loose and busted open.
The load was all active bee hives. I don't recall how many million bees they said escaped. My question is, would it be possible for those bees to have taken this long to locate each other and reform their squadrons? @He Dog
Those "wrecked" bees are long past their life span. Quite possible the survivors established colonies and it is their off spring, that is if the queen in the "wrecked" hive survived.
Honey bees swarm when a colony gets more than one queen, they split and seek out a new home. Hollow tree, building or the likes.
Too lazy to google and info here is more interesting,,,,,what is the life span of a honey bee or hive? Thanks
Whether people realize this, active hives are often moved from state to state to help pollinate. Ohio to CA etc.
Such is having a devastating effect on bees as they become confused with new pollen and feed sources plus they have biological navigation which is compromised from the move, conditions from weather changes and more. Shock from changes in habitat kill more than you can imagine.
Worker bee about 25 days or there abouts, queen maybe couple years.
Ole Pepe Lepew or Yogi could shorten that considerably.
We have a short hedge of Russian Sage. It blooms just about July 4 every year. By now, it ought to have hundreds of honey bees buzzing around in it dawn to dusk, as it has every year so far. But this year, it's just grasshoppers in there. Whether our record-breaking snow year killed off a bunch of hives, or there's been some disease, I'm not sure. I just know that there are not many honeybees this year. Sad; I really like the little boogers. I think they're cute, and they're far too busy gathering nectar and pollen to be aggressive. Kind like scale model hummingbirds, in a way.
The short answer is no. Except for queens, bees don't live that long. If a lot of queens were lost, you might suddenly have a good number of queen bees starting new feral colonies. In two years time, they might have split and swarmed. It is also possible this was a usual number of swarms, that in most years were in less inhabited areas. Unlikely fireworks had anything to do with it.
Sorry
My mind went back to a episode of Gilligan's Island where the ladies formed a band called the honeybees to impress a producer who had landed on the island
But the guy who was going to rescue them thought they were to good and sneaked off and left with out them
Speaking of honey bees I heard from TRAP55 that bee's were leaving the orchards in droves down in the Sacramento valley
"Independence Now, Independence Forever."
John Adams
that can't be a good sign, whats up with that
Maybe the whole place is fixin' to sink and the bees are gettin' while the gettin' is good! Run, Trap, Run!