[click image, large pdf, 2009 report on Colony Collapse Disorder]My daisies are in full bloom, having resisted the depredations of every sort of varmint, and there are lots and lots of itty bitty bees enjoying my garden full of my favorite flower right now. This is the first time in four years there has been a significant number of them in my garden. There used to be a very determined bumble bee who showed up late every afternoon, but I haven't encountered him this year. I've just looked very closely and these are bona fide honey bees, but they are less than half the size of the ones we all grew up encountering. Babies? A heartier wild strain?
I worry about them, here in the Easter Lily Capital of the World. Those bastards spray the living bejaysuss out of their fields every other day or so. For all I know, these are some genetically modified bees... or NSA spy bots posing as garden-enhancing nature.
Oh, I wonder if the bug in my latest photo on my blog is the same as this? We do have a lot of what I call bumble bees though.
ReplyDeleteI put on my high-powered glasses and gave them another close examination. They are so small it is hard to discern the fuzz, but they all have a patch of it on the part of their bodies just behind their heads. I can't see if there's fuzz on their legs too, but the fuzz is the honey bee thing. It holds on to the pollen.
ReplyDeleteBumble bees are big fat round black furry with a couple bright yellow also furry stripes and they're much noisier than regular bees.
Most wild bees are about twice the size of these little guys and most domesticated bees are about three, maybe even four, times their size. They bred them to be as big as they could get and still fly, which I think does them no good when it comes to battling off bee diseases and parasites.
Anyway, for some reason, all this mass die-offs of bees business upsets me worse than other awful stuff... makes me as angry as the threat to the polar bears. I mean, it all makes me angry but killing off honey bees somehow seems to take the cake, to be emblematic of the extent of the evil we are doing.
I couldn't tell if my bug had fuzz on it. Probably some kind of fly. This bee die-off is very upsetting to me too as it impacts on our food supply! Yes, I blame all the chemicals, the GM foods, monoculture farming and moving these poor bees all over the whole country.
ReplyDeleteMarja-leena, the bee in your photo is a midget bee; it is a native of the Americas. I have them pollinating my strawberries here in Los Angeles. 99, the bee in your photo is actually a fly that mimics a bee. The way the wings stick out is a giveaway; all bees’ wings are able to fold back.
ReplyDeleteYes. Thanks, lafin. I picked this image because it most closely resembles in relative size the little buggers out there in my daisies and strawberries of any of the images I could find online... but the ones in my yard aren't flies... though there are flies too....
ReplyDeleteI need a damn camera!
Among other things.... :-P