Elmer's Beesness

Pollinators are very important to agriculture. Currently in the United States, bees have been having problems with something called, "colony collapse." For some reason lots of bee keepers have been losing their bee hives to this disorder. There are several different speculative views (Including my own,) about why the bees are dying off. Until some specific studies can be done, most of the speculation is only good for bee keepers to keep a watchful eye out for odd things in the foraging radius that the beehives are kept.

One of the flowers I have added to my garden are sunflowers. I added these because they are like bee magnets. The sunflowers are over eight feet tall, and act as a billboard advertisements to local bees who may be a few houses away flying over six feet tall fences.

Sunflowers are relatively easy to grow and most of them seem to reproduce flowers throughout the summer. I see honey bees, bumble bees, and lots of other kinds of bee like insects. I also have parasitic wasps that are real beneficial to the garden because they lay their eggs and makes snacks of nematodes/grubs which turn into beetles that can lay waste to a good garden after hatching.

I speculate that genetically modified plants are causing colony collapse disorder in bee hives. The reason I think that is is something like this is that the disorder does not seem to be something that existed 30+ years ago.(I'm guessing) I have heard the idea that it could be radio waves from cell phones and Internet, but I think that the collapse disorder is more related to something biological. One of the reasons are that radio frequencies cover large wave like radius projections out from a transmission point. Not all hives are effected in a series of hives. I think bees get out and pollinate genetically modified crops and bring the genetically modified plant dust/pollen back to their colony and then it kills the colony like a pesticide. It's something on the nano-level that starves out the bee without the bee knowing it is happening. Maybe like the difference between eating real peanuts and peanut flavored Styrofoam peanuts.

I do have wasps around, but not in the garden and none of them have any interest in botanicals. Mud daubers, hornets, and the brown paper wasps sometimes frequent my yard, but i see more bees than anything else. I have a few bees I see every once in a while but I am not sure what flavor of bee they are at this point, and I have not captured any on virtual-film.

The other bee magnet in my garden is a vine called Passion Flower/Passion Fruit vine. The bees really are attracted to this vine. It comes up in my yard every year and I have to pull a lot of it to keep it from taking over my raised beds. It grows real fast and there are usually lots of flowers on this plant in mid summer that bees are working over. (I have seen both bumble bees and honey bees resting on this flower... just lounging around.) The fruit from this vine is like a mini crisp like cucumber... It's not something I get excited over, but it did produce fruit last year. It has not this year because it has been too hot for it. (I guess.)

This vine takes over trellises and fences so I get a nice spread of bee magnets from eight feet high to creeping across the ground and across the fence. To get the bees closer to my vegetables I have Borage and Basil herbs and I end up with enough bees to keep me out of the garden during peak daylight hours.