where have the insects gone?
This beautiful allium should be buzzing with bees on this, the hottest day of the year.
But the garden is quiet and bees are counted in singles visiting the flowers that wait around the garden.
There has been a lot of hyperbole about falling bee numbers: but this silence in our garden is deafening.
Has anyone else noticed this fall?
4 comments:
It seems to be ok here, we have lots of bees this spring.
We, in northern U.S.A., have noticed less bees for the last three years, last year being the worst so far. It makes a person a bit nervous.
Mike
That's really disturbing, since I saw SO many bees last year in gardens around this time in Southern England.
Here in the SE (US), we've an abundance of bees this year, along with lots of rain (thankfully).
There's a great diversity of bumblebees, sweatbees, and honeybees, as well as plenty of butterflies (it's early to see so many butterflies). When the squash flowers open, I guess I'll see how many squash bees are around. Fruit set on the blueberries is excellent, so there were plenty of the blueberry specialist bees!
So hopefully some combination of poor weather over winter and spring has just dampened their numbers -- we've had years that I haven't seen many butterflies until August because of long cool springs.
Lisa
We have had two poor years for bees and so this, coupled with a loss of habitat and food has impacted directly on bee populations.
I hope this summer is better for them.
Cheers
Rob
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