Bee Chronicles

August 7, 2018

It is July 25. There is Good News and Bad News!

It has rained 32 of the past 61 days. The Annual average is 54”. I am not a TV Meteorologist but looking out the window indicates it is soggy out there. Raining again on 28 June. It is darker at 10 AM than it was at 6 AM. Thunder has rumbled all night long but we only got 4/10 inch of rain. We started July 8” ahead of last year (which was a wet year) and are 18” above average for first 6 months of the year. I have seen a draught after this kind of spring.

It is 23 July and still raining. Last week we had 6 dry days. 21 and 22 July 1 ½ inches per night. My driveway is rutted again. This hardly ever happens, but twice this year.

Well, the Bad News first. 25 June: I do not see many sourwood trees blooming. Those that are blooming are not as robust as usual. I can not tell if it will improve. We are not yet to the “normal” sourwood bloom period which should be the second week of July. The longest sourwood season I have seen was 7 weeks. It started early July and went into August. This early bloom would help the bees if it was not raining. Being a weak bloom is good if it drags on for a long time. The wind will affect the amount of nectar more than the rain. Sourwood has a bell shaped flower hanging with the open end down. Keeps rain out but wind shakes the nectar out. No matter what, expect a below average sourwood flow. 20 Jul: sourwood flow is over. The last blooms on the flower fingers is gone. Gary Gailley, world famous beekeeper in Cleveland GA informs me that if the sourwood does not get enough sun in May it will not bloom well that year. I know some plants need X amount of sun to bloom. So, if sourwood needs X amount of sun in May to bloom in June or July it did not get it. I could believe this (no scientific evidence). In May it was foggy in the morning and rainy in the afternoon most all month. At least 15 days of rain with no 3 day breaks. If it was not rainy it was very overcast and cool. Go figure.

Good news: The bees fly up to 2 miles looking for food. Check all your neighborhoods around the bees to see if they are getting more sourwood than just at your house. The long distance flights will slow the nectar collection rate.

Good news: We should have a very good mushroom crop in the forest. Chanterelles are one of the best tasting. Last year there was a bumper crop. They are one of the most expensive, sought after mushrooms for the restaurants.

Stern warning. You need to start thinking about sugar for bee food syrup last month. It took 8 weeks for me to get up on the pick up list last year. Our bees will not have enough honey stored by August. Even if we don’t rob the honey.

If you are standing, sit down! If you are sitting down, grab the edge of your chair!

There are problems in the bee yard!! America reports its first time ever of doing hand pollination for commercial crops. This past spring in sunny southern California they pollinated some date crops by hand due to a shortage of migrating pollinators.

Why we cannot go back to native pollinators! Because our crops are not native. The native bees (over 4000 species) are tailored to the native crops. Even though we may be growing a species of plant originally from the Americas, it will have no resemblance to the heritage plant. Maybe the native bees can work the new flower. Maybe not. Remember not even the honey bee is native to America.

We plant crops on weird cycles so they will ripen together in waves making harvest more efficient. The native bees may not hatch and be around on this abnormal cycle. Then we introduce rain during the normal dry season to keep the cycles where we want them. This is called irrigation. Then we destroy the habitat for the natives with this rain, or plowing the dry dirt, or planting cover crops covering up the dirt that the miner and digger bees use for nesting.

We haven’t even addressed the effects of “clean farming”. Round up ready plants, killing all the weeds near the fields, summer fallowing, or right-or-way weed spraying reducing bee habitat.

Now there is a decent sized effort bringing in bumble bees to help with the pollination. They are starting to contract the same diseases as honey bees and bringing in some of their own that are being spread to native bumble bees.

Some good news is that “bee” research money is starting to look at some of these other affects.