A few basic facts about bees:
* A single honey bee may collect 1/12 teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
* To make 1 pound of honey, bees may need to fly 50,000 miles.
* Honey bees may forage up to 2-5 miles from the hive.
There is a lot of discussion about Colony Collapse Disorder based on the disappearance of bee colonies. The USDA site answers some questions about Colony Collapse Disorder and how it affects us.
Here’s another perspective from the New York Times.
The National Honey Bee Day website has a lot of resources about honeybees
It’s always nice to end with a note of hope. Some help for the bees.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Leslie, a friend and I recently stopped by your house while you were gardening and we had a lovely conversation. Talked about Germany, among other things. I mentioned that my cousin’s son (second cousin?) is a beekeeper, and I told you I’d find out more about his business. He’s not in it for the honey, he uses them for pollination. Here’s what my cousin writes about her son: ‘if your friend is interested in raising bees, he suggested the most helpful way to start would be to contact a local beekeeping club in the San Diego area. Apparently that is best for someone who has no experience and would like to know more about it. Gilly is a beekeeper on a very large scale. He has 15,000 to 20,000 colonies and is right now getting his bees ready to transport to the Almond orchards in Bakersfield. They are spread over a very large area from Ramona to Santa Barbara and he needs to monitor them closely for any signs of mites etc. It is a very busy time and also stressful. Last week he had a problem with Bears in the Santa Barbara area and had to build an electric fence to try to keep the bears away. He recently heard that a friend in North Dakota had lost 90% of his bees.’ Hope you find this interesting. Best, Eva.
Hello Eva,
I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation last week! Thank you for the information about your 2nd cousin and his bees. Very interesting. I had never heard of bees being transported distances to orchards. Now I will pay more attention and study up on this subject of bees.
Hope to see you again out in the yard! Sincerely, Leslie