Bees and Bumblebees

reply to post by Aggie Man


I read in some article somewhere that the bee population is estimated to be extinct within the decade.

blog.targethealth.com...

scienceray.com...

www.nytimes.com...

reply to post by Dookzor


Bees can replaced by a very tedious process of tricking a healthy hive into creating more queens which you then can extract to start new hives. You can also buy hives which cost a around three hundred dollars each.

Bee decline could be down to chemical cocktail interfering with brains

Just found this today, I think it makes an interesting point,

I saw this article yesterday. It is somewhat pertinent to the discussion.

An Island of Honeybees in the African Desert

A unique population of honeybees isolated for perhaps the last 10,000 years has been found living at an oasis in the northern Sahara Desert.

The bees are of the same species, Apis mellifera, that are crucial to America's food supply, responsible for one in every three bites of food on our plates. But when researchers examined colonies around the oasis of Kufra in Libya, they found them to be genetically distinct from any other known population.

The genetic differences indicate the bees have been marooned at Kufra since between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago, when shifting climate patterns turned a verdant ancient savanna into today's parched desert. Only the area's natural supply of groundwater keeps life hanging on.

Even more telling, the bees of Kufra showed no signs of the Varroa destructor parasite, an often deadly infestation that is easily spread among honeybees throughout most of the world.

Bees living at Kufra are also free from the Varroa destructor parasitic mite, which is decimating colonies around the world and has been implicated in a global decline of honeybee populations.

Tons of bees in my area, they are still doing well here.
They seem to really love the Russian sage growing next to the house!

I thought it was a huge bee on the chaste vitex...but as I got closer, I realized it was a new creature I had never seen in my life....(and I have lived a loooooong time). I scoured the internet until I got an answer.

Have you ever seen a Hummingbird Moth?

reply to post by Alethea


I did. They are amazing they actually look like hummingbirds.

PS.
Check your mail.

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