Bees missing!

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Westi
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All my chives are in flower which usually means lots of bees. They like them so much I purposefully let them self sow around lottie, and also the poppies are flowering but not one bee!

I am quite worried about this - anyone else noticed an absence in their area?

Westi
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alan refail
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They were very buzzy ( :wink: ) here around the apple blossom.
Cred air o bob deg a glywi, a thi a gei rywfaint bach o wir (hen ddihareb Gymraeg)
Believe one tenth of what you hear, and you will get some little truth (old Welsh proverb)
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Primrose
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My big Pom Pom alliums and foxgloves are bursting into flower so I would expect to see a lot of bees around but very few bees here at the moment although earlier in the year we had a lot of bumble bees around. I will keep my eye for them as any absence is indeed very worrying.,

I.now grow a mixture of climbing French beans and runner beans rather than all runners as I had some poor pollination years with runner beans due to lack of bees in bad weather years and climbing Frenh beans are supposed to be self fertile.
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Primrose wrote:My big Pom Pom alliums and foxgloves are bursting into flower so I would expect to see a lot of bees around but very few bees here at the moment although earlier in the year we had a lot of bumble bees around. I will keep my eye for them as any absence is indeed very worrying.,

I.now grow a mixture of climbing French beans and runner beans rather than all runners as I had some poor pollination years with runner beans due to lack of bees in bad weather years and climbing Frenh beans are supposed to be self fertile.



Hi Primrose, if you are worried about bees and pollination on your runner beans try moonlight , or starlight. I had moonlight last year and they cropped very well I was pleased with them, they are both self pollinating,same again this year .
All the best
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oldherbaceous
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Morning Codger, do you mean Moonlight and Firestorm?

We wouldn't want people to be trying to find the elusive Starlight bean.... :)
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Geoff
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I'm growing all three this year Firestorm, Moonlight and Stardust (nearly right OC) and all have germinated really well in rootrainers. I also have some Red Flame that I have grown for quite a few years to compare them with, 20 of each will make my row. Moonlight was successful last year. I don't have any trouble with bumble bee numbers, we have lots of different species but I do have trouble with them taking runner bean flowers from behind and so not pollinating them.
Meant to reply to the other thread about runner beans - I wouldn't consider sowing any peas or beans directly in the ground.
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Primrose
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Yes I've read various good reports about Moonlight and will try some as soon as I've exhausted my current stock of bean seeds. I always like to try new varieties but find one consequence of this is that I seem to end up with a huge supply of half used packets.
It would be good if I knew a keen vegetable grower nearby with whom we could swap a few seeds of "this and that" to avoid this problem and just run some small trials. For the relatively small growing space I and possibly some other people have, it hardly seems worth buying a packet of different variety of beans just to grow half a dozen experiment ones along with my normal variety. You risk end up being left with ageing seed which you then blame as being unreliable because it doesn't germinate well.
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alan refail
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Looks like the bees have gone window shopping :wink:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-27444845
Cred air o bob deg a glywi, a thi a gei rywfaint bach o wir (hen ddihareb Gymraeg)
Believe one tenth of what you hear, and you will get some little truth (old Welsh proverb)
Westi
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So that's where they've gone - little devils! :D Hope they come back soon!

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Primrose
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That. must have been quite a sight. I expect for a lot of town dwellers that was probably the only "up front and personal" contact they will have had with wildlife. I wonder what they made of it. Swarming bees is quite an awesome sight.
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I grew Moonlight last year and had a very good crop, so I am growing it again (seeds left over from last year) and also, for the first time, Firestorm. So will see what happens with pollination. They are now in roottrainers.
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2 bees today but different varieties - hoping they get message back to the hives!

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Geoff
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Got a nest in my shed, perhaps they eat woodworm! Haven't identified them yet. Perhaps about half the size of a big bumble with ginger front end, black body and pale bum.

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peter
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Walked past a very active and large bumblebee nest in the eaves of a community football club building today.
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Geoff
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I think I've found it Bombus Hypnorum, this article http://bumblebeeconservation.org/images ... rticle.pdf talks about their behaviour when disturbed by vibration, that's how I found them. Looks like I'm on the edge of their habitat.
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