bees

I'm whispering this, but, thus far, we've had no wasps this season or yellow jackets, which is ususual...could be more rain than usual, and we consider a blessing.

"we've had no wasps this season or yellow jackets, which is ususual.."

That's because all the yellow jackets are living under my tomatoes and cucumbers. I don't know what I'll do when it's time to pick something, and one tomato is almost ready. Two sets of angry yeollw jacket stings is enough for one year....:(

BTW, shall I send you a few??

Wasps and Yellow Jackets we can do with out... I kill them (Daughter is allergic) I am not sure if there is any type of spay you could use to kill them or at least get them away from your plants so it is safe to get to your veggies! Also that will not kill you if it gets on your veggie's... If I find anything I will post it here for you...

It seems the working bee (they have big butts and are fuzzy and create pollination) are the ones that I am worried about... Do not kill those - we are in small supply here in VA.

FYI - if you have siding on your house - we have found that the wasp are actually setting up shop under the siding on the house... HATE THEM!!!

No, I don't want to kill them. Okay, I WANT to, but I won't. I never knew they were beneficial to a veggie garden, but I have seen few wormie pests this year, and apparently I have them to thank for it. Sigh. We used to have a bee suit around somewhere. I'll have to look for it....

I never thought in a million years that I would be so interested in bee's or pollination - but growing a garden and learning how the process in nature works - i am becoming a bit of a freak about it =) It is fascinating
how everything works and what we take for granted....

With that being said- Wasps are mostly predators (yellow jackets included) they do not contribute to pollination or want anything to do with your garden. . The do not have tacky little feet - it is the honey bee that I would NEVER kill - they are short in supply and bee farmers are loosing millions of bee's a day do to Colony Collapse Disorder - which (this is all from what I have read) scientist are now making a link between a certain insecticide that is crippling the bee's nervous system and making it impossible for them to remember there flight pattern home (to the hive) A mother bee would never leave her young and young bees are being deserted by there mothers and dying by the millions. This insecticide has been baned across the world - England and France being two of the bigger ones - but the US continues to us it.

Please do not think I am a horrible murderer … I never thought twice about bee's until this past year and now I just want to see more - not just for my own garden but for the wild flowers and wild berries... everything that requires pollination

I also read that if your garden has ants... that is ok too - they have the sticky little feet and will pollinate everything they walk on!!

I forgot to mention... The Parasitic Wasp - if very very beneficial to your garden.... not to be confused with the predator wasp (hornets and yellow jackets) The Parasitic Wasp are much much smaller and if you are growing tomato's and you see you have a horn worm covered in white things (not sure how to explain them) DO NOT KILL THE WORM. Inside of that worms are the parasitic wasp eggs- they do not sting or anything like that - but they take over your gardens pest....I am still learning and reading up on these guys - you can actually buy them for your garden...

It is all just amazing to me...

I really think that with the state the bees are in, we should have a few more bee keepers around here. Find your local bee keeping association and they will hook you up with a mentor. Great group of people!!! What are you all afraid of? :-)

I think my husband will definalty leave me if I take it that far... I have to carry epi pens for him and his daughter... This could not be an option for us... But it is a great idea.... I am learning so much about them.... we could all stand to learn somehting from their work ethic... the LOVE and LIVE for what they do... I wonder how that would feel... they are truely an amazing littel bug =)

I'm a self taught bee keeper, for, oh, so many years. There is no doubt the bees were here before I was. I have 'learned their ways' and maintained and 'petted' them, and, now, others join me. Do understand that the bees tried to run me out, to take over the property that they consider their own - and, for heavens sake, it was/is!! Instead of destroying them, I decided to live with them and tame them, and, I did. The bees are gentle, unless pressured, and we have had two run ins. Once they built their hive inside the wall of my barn, and once, inside a storehouse. We waited for 3 years to have a professional bee man remove them from the storehouse, we were only able to go inside in the winter. The bees, here for generations, remained, and now have their hives on our property in large oak trees, a protected, natural habitat. We have learned to carefully watch for new hive activity, outside the oak trees, and remove them to the protected area, which they do not seem to mind. They arrive for 'work' daily, to my crepe myrtle trees, and their numbers appear to grow each season. I am dedicated to bees and I'm pleased to see the strong interest on this thread.

" A mother bee would never leave her young and young bees are being deserted by there mothers and dying by the millions."

Well, I agree that the bees flying around and pollinating are female, but they are sterile workers, not bee Mommies. The only Bee Mommy is the Queen, and there's generally only one per hive. She's far from maternal. She doesn't take care of the bee larvae, the larva are cared for by specific bees who do only that. The queen has other things to do, and that's, well, work with the drones to proliferate the species :)

" Wasps are mostly predators (yellow jackets included) they do not contribute to pollination or want anything to do with your garden."

No, I understand that they don't pollinate, but that's not what I meant by beneficial. Insects don't need to be pollinators to do good things for the garden. They are predators, as you say. In my garden, they are doing something, because the bad bugs are few and far between this year, and the only difference I can see from last year is the resident yellow jackets. No if only whatever small furry things are eating my tomatoes were afraid of them...

Thank you for another little bee leason - as for the wasp and yellow jackets ... is there a way to remove them from say ... our back door to somewhere out further in the yard with out harming them? I do not want to harm or kill anything - but we look at rushing to the er if one gets my husband or his daughter. What can you do?

Also, I noticed this morning when i went out to look at my garden... I have a couple more working bees - can i assume those are honey bee's? Is there a way to get more of the "good" bee's to come to my house?

Thanks for all the inout- I am finding this web page so helpful and I am really learning a lot =)

Thanks
Kelly

Wow! This has been so interesting and informative. I have found that I, too, have become fascinated with bees and so much more appreciative of them now that I am a gardener. We do have several bees that visit our yard and garden, but not nearly as many as I would expect, given that my yard is mostly clover. We haven't lived here long and this is our first year for a garden on this property, so I don't have a lot to compare it to. It just seems that that our yard should be covered in honey bees, and I usually only see one or two at any given time. Most of what I see are these little bees (that we have always referred to as "sweat bees.") I have an uncle who is a beekeeper (not commercially, just more of a hobby-ist). He and I were just discussing the dangers that are threatening our bee population. I have to say that I am extremely concerned about this crisis and am trying to figure out what we together can do about it. Thank you, Kmarvaso, for the info about Burt's Bees project. I will definitely check that out. Is there anything else that we can be doing to help educate people about this? If this is a pesticide issue, can we be lobbying or petitioning for stores to stop carrying these products?
Thanks, everyone, for your contributions to this thread and happy gardening to y'all. :)

The drones are raised only to mate with the queens. Then the workers kick all the male drones out the door! I have seen them wrestle him to the door and give him the boot! Man, you girls can be tough!

http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/animals/bees.asp?gclid=CMG55trVxJQCFQVfFQodlAnaEw

Here is another web page I have found that has a lot of info on our little friend the bee...

I am now going to start researching congress and farmers aid and what if anything is being done....

Just plant the types of flowers the bees like. They'll come.

And don't try and get Congress involved.....they just mess up everything.....and I don't want to start paying for bees, thank you.

It has been my experience that the people who do not want to jump in and help or make things better are always the ones to complain the loudest at the end of the day. The day you will have to pay for bee’s is the day that we (the people who care) do not get involved.. When we stop reading a learning about our environment and just how bad it is.. When we do not step up to our congressmen and say enough is enough – banned these pesticides.. they are killing our bee’s and without them we have NO food source. We have no pollination… we have no color … wild flowers…. That is the day you will have to either purchase your bee’s from the black market bee dealer because all the bee farmers are out of business or learn to hand pollinate. I understand not everyone wants to read and learn – but I am finding great pleasure in my new found knowledge… I am also learning that I have a responsibility as a caring person to get involved!!

Knowledge is power …. Involvement is empowering …… and thanks to the people like me… we make it possible for the people who “don't read that stuff...” to sit back and just “expect” pollination to take place…….

http://www.defenders.org/index.php

Just wanted to share a really cool page that I found today - I get the defenders of wildlife news letter and I decided to search there page today for what is going on with bee's. This page is pretty cool - lots of pictures of all the different breeds or bee's and a little about them... I learned a couple new things today!!

Above is the defenders of wildlife web page... below is the bee page..

enjoy!!

http://www.defenders.org/resources/publications/programs_and_policy/habitat_conservation/private_lands/living_lands/rally2007/native_bees_help_ecology_and_economy.pdf?ht=bee%20bee

My doggie, French, is always on bug patrol. Today, French was very excited and demanded my attention on the deck. I should have told you, regardless of the type bug or frog or lizard or turtle, French doesn't harm the intruder, he just makes sure I know about it. Well, today, I was surprised to find French dancing around on what appeared to be a drunk honey bee, on his back. Sweet little bee only needed to be scooped up with a piece of paper and after being right side up and sobering up for a few moments, he was off, FULLY LOADED, to the hive. I am pleased that French wasn't stung, he's a good dog...

SherryLike, I like your position on the bees & critters in general. To those new to gardening there are also butterflies to help pollinate. Most of the bees we see are the bumblebees and thank goodness for them. Most of the wasps I've seen are beneficial ones and I give them space and have not been stung.
To the person with serious medical issues, there are traps you can place on your porch that do trap them. Here are some of my helpers.

Thank you, bugme!! I love your photo and your helpers. I wish my bees would position themselves in such a nice background for me to photo, your daylily is so pretty! I surely wish our two cats were as nice to the critters as our dogs. Despite bells on their collars, they stalk butterflies and birds, breaks my heart!! And, to make matters even worse, they don't do it for food, only to play, breaks my heart. If anyone knows of a way to stop this behavior, I'd love to know...I took a huge moth away from Buck Cody last night and sent him to safety, but the butterflies are too fragile, and all I can do is attempt to distract them when I see that happen.

Thanks, it is a squash....does sort of look like a daylily. Most of my daylilies are done blooming. Your dogs sound like what I call real "lovees". Our's consider us humans part of their pack. They are not quite as sweet as your's though. They are Jack Russell "terrors" and will attack anything that moves!! Our old kitty died on us after 19 loving years.

Gosh, I didn't have on my glasses but now I do and that is a beautiful squash and still looks like a daylily!! Hahaha, I call my grands 'lovees', I call my dogs spoiled worse than rotten, one Golden, Blueray, and one cockapoo rescue, at 1 year, French Wynn. I'm so sorry about your kitty, our cockatiel was 19 too, and that was years ago, and we still talk about him as if he's going to pop up on my shoulder...the loss of a pet is tough duty, and all of ours live very close to us, in our hearts!!!!!

Wow, I had heard about the bee problem last summer from a friend in UT, and my neighbor her in So Calif told me out County was not going to allow bee boxes within so many feet of a home. We have avocado ranches in the hills behind our house with home scattered about. If the boxes could not be near homes there would not be pollinators for the trees!

We moved here 4 years ago and ours & our neighbors lots had been scraped nearly clean of the chaparral. Things are growing now - he really has a green thumb - and we have lots of dirt I am working on, as I can afford it. I let some of the 'wind sown' chaparral stay since it fills in nicely and looks like Queen Anne's lace, Rosemary & Thyme. We even have these self seeding trees that look like Tx or Golden Rain Trees and can grow 5 feet in one year. They are deciduous and come winter I "harvest" them and move them out of the pasture to other parts of the property. Great future shade trees and they only need the winter rains! Our horses and goats get 1/2 of our 1.5 acres, so nothing to plant there, or they would eat it! Growing my first veggie garden this year, but have been planting for hummers and butterflies and the bees have come with them. This is also the first year we are not having monthly "pest control" that DH loves (it's good not to afford SOME things). Last year I would walk in front of the man with the spray and beat the bushes and flowers to make sure my lizards and such ran for cover. The only reason DH goes outside is because the garage is not attached. LOL!

In the early evening when I water and fill the bird bath, the hummers like to dance through the fine mist. In the daytime the butterflies and the bees come to join the dance in the mist! I repurposed a Realty sign post to hold my bird feeder and planted juicy flowers beneath it, what the birds drop the doves, and bunnies eat. I even had a road runner chasing a bunny last week. It's so much better now with the "birds & the bees" than when we moved in to "just dirt".

I don't know about the rest of the country, but it seems I have more of every pollinator than I have had in years. My garden is teaming with sweat bees, solitary bees, bumble bees, and even a few honey bees (very few). The honey bees are plenteous here, they just don't prefer small crops unless there is no major crop with flowers. I had one or two days the honey bees were pretty heavy. Then something else must have come into bloom that suited their fancy more.

I believe the areas that are having problems have had pesticides used heavily. I used to keep honey bees and the beekeepers I've talked to seem to believe that the hive collapse disorder is cased by pesticides.

I use them myself, I got tired of the work keeping bugs away. But I don't treat plants that have active bloom with pesticides, and I make sure areas that are treated don't have standing puddles of water. Honey Bees can be by a pristine lake and they'll choose to drink from the stagnant mud-puddle. Go figure.

In my area, sgriffith, my property does not attract hummingbirds because I'm not 'large' enough to compete with the cotton, and other crop fields, which are nearby and HUGE. Goodness me, the hummers do enjoy my basil, who knew??!! The honey bees prefer the crepes...

I'm in Norfolk, VA and have seen a few bumble bees and wasps in my garden. I have a friend who's a bee keeper, his hives have gone from 20 to 41 all from removing from peoples homes.

btw, I love crepe myrtles. I wish I could take one to UT when I move back home (after military) but I don't think they'd hold up to the cold.