Year 4 June - What Now? 🖊️
The fruit tree bloom is over, and things feel a bit bleak.
Reflecting on the Quiet
The dandelions have nearly finished their bloom. The caragana, lilac, and honeysuckle are starting to blossom, with yellow sweet cover blooms making an appearance. Here’s what my bee observations have yielded so far:
- 4 honeybees.
- 0 mason bees.
- 1 bumblebee, surprisingly more than 30 miles from the nearest beeyard.
- 3 wasps.
- A dozen flies.
- A half dozen small pollinators on some spirea.
That’s about it!
So, I haven’t bothered setting out any swarm traps, and my beekeeping plans for this year are falling apart. No bees in the cards.
And that might be for the best. After delving into Randy Oliver’s Sick Bees Conclusion, it seems it might be a while before beekeeping becomes routine in this area.
Given the impact of these viruses on both honeybees and wild pollinators, I’ve decided to wait until the wild bee population shows signs of recovery before filling my equipment with expensive bees and queens.
While I haven’t spotted any bees around, there are truckloads of singles headed for the Dakotas. It’s unusual to see them so late in the season. It’s an ominous sign, as those singles were probably deadouts—now hopefully filled with splits, truckloads of hope? I hope they are not empty deadouts. Losing the bees is one thing, but it’s another for those beekeepers and their families to lose their livelihoods.
Yet, those trucks might hint at another possibility, a darker one. Perhaps they are diesel-propelled virus reservoirs, spreading death and destruction. I certainly hope not! It’s one thing for beekeepers to take a hit, but it’s another to wipe out all those wild native bees.
The truth likely lies somewhere in between.
What a mess we’ve gotten into! Our consumptive ways, combined with population pressures, have put our food and water sources in jeopardy. Is there enough time and space left to go natural? I suspect that if we don’t learn to fit in with nature, we simply won’t fit in.
Life will persist. It will fill the void that we left. And the age of homo sapiens will be over. ✨
-Cheers, D 🍂🐝
