Disappearing bees

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Monika
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Location: Yorkshire Dales

There's a very interesting article on the disappearing bee syndrome in today's Daily Telegraph magazine for anybody who has bees!
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Chantal
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Have a look here, there's some amazing and very scary info in there...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jh ... bees04.xml
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madasafish
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Johnboy
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Hi Monika,
Yesterday I was told by a person who has over 60 hives out that he has not had a single pot of honey this year and does not expect any. He is a lecturer for a living but his entire life is spent with Bees outside lecturing. This is the first time in over 40 years that this has occurred. He is unsure why at present but I will give you any information that comes to hand.
Monika
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How very sad. We have had a very bad set on our broad beans this year and also not too good on peas. One lot of broad beans was full of flowers but produced almost no beans. The marrows were large and perfect but very few on each plant, and I am sure it was the lack of bees. We grow lots of thyme, marjoram, summer savory etc to attract bees and have hardly had any. Please do let us know, Johnboy, when you get some more info.
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Colin_M
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I spoke to a beekeeper today who said they had lost around a third of their colonies over the last 12 months.

She felt they'd been affected by the Varroa bug and was keeping an open mind about some of the alternative causes recently mooted. They tried 2 different treatments for varroa, the second of which made some difference.


Colin
girdhar
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Hi,
honey bees are structurally very delicate and also susceptible to the various polluting ingredient.There are various species of the bees are on the way of the extinction .this is the be threat to the crop as they play important role in the fertilization.
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allotmentkate
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I went to check my beehive on Boxing Day and it was empty! I didn't have my hive tool with me as I hadn't intended opening the hive so couldn't look through it properly but could see something was wrong as soon as I got there and on opening the roof could see there were no bees between the frames.

Am going back today to collect up any corpses I can find and taking them to our local association to see if they can see any sign of disease

Kate
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