Bees

[Gary Fowler]

You know what they said in the Jurrasic Park movie, mother nature will always find a way. Even if the bees per chance do die off, there will be other insects to take their place in the pollenation scheme or the Plants will adapt to different pollenation methods. Hopefully soon mankind will find the cause and cure for the honey bee demise though. I do like a spoonful of honey bee vomit now and again.

 

[mattbatson]

the africanized bee's are here to stay.
their queen is born a day earlier than the europeon queen, and by then, the africanized queen has coverted the entire hive over to her as the leader.
or something like that...I watched a show on it.

anyways, scientists dont see them slowing down at this point, and are kind of concerned about what the future holds.
most think we are just going to have to get used to africanized bees, just like we get used to rattle snakes and other dangerous critters.
they are going to spread and they are very effective at taking over the regular europeon hives.

 

[forgeblast]

I do like a spoonful of honey bee vomit now and again.
I agree. I am keeping bees just to get our local honey so that it will help lessen my daughters allergies.
I do have a buddy that makes mead. His blueberry mead is just amazing, i think its 8lbs of blueberries to 5lbs of honey and he starts with 6 gallons of water and then lets ferment with a wine yeast. bottles it lets it sit a year and its just wonderful.

 

[RobertBrown]

around our place, we've got paper wasps, mud wasps(hornets?) bald-faced wasps, yellow jackets, blue jackets(these are really mean) and lately some big suckers, about the size of a bumble bee but with a longer body, mostly black with white. These big suckers are eating half-inch dia. holes right thru the P.T. wood of my gazebo.
Always got to think about putting fingers under anything that sits outside...

Pete

The worst part about carpenter bees is when the big woodpecker decides he has to have them.
Your gazebo will look like it got shot up with a .45.

 

[pjbci]

The worst part about carpenter bees is when the big woodpecker decides he has to have them.
Your gazebo will look like it got shot up with a .45.

Come on, tell the truth now, you was shooting at that woopecker with your .45 wasnt you! Haha.

 

[DJ54]

I posted in "Build it Yourself" these pics under "Thinning the Herd". I saw a video on YouTube on how to build Carpenter Bee traps, so crudely made a few just to see if they work. As you can see in the second picture, they certainly do. Those pics were taken several weeks ago, and I've caught many more.

I still see a few buzzing around, but not many. Seems I still see one in a trap buzzing around, at least one per day.

Wish I had a few rainy days to make more... I posted on my Facebook page to show friends, and got about a dozen requests for them...

I've caught a few other flying insects too. Some sort of small wasps, also some.., what we refer too as a Yellow Jacket (wasp looking varmint, with yellow and black striped abdoman), and some fly's... Since fly's seem attracted to it, brought one to the other place to hang above the horse stalls, and see what I can catch... Sometimes it doesn't take much to entertain myself..., LOL....