Are anyone else's pollinators missing? 🐝
I'm in MA and my hydrangeas are usually swarming with bees (like, children don't want to walk past) but right now are empty. My zucchinis are normally robust but this year I have only small, misshapen ones and I think they're under-pollinated.
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Do you have neighbors who keep/kept honey bees? Most of my honey bee visitors are tended a single beekeeping neighbor. If they removed the hives or lost them to disease, there would be very few bees left in my garden.
Not that I know of, and usually I see a mix of honeybees, bumblebees, many little waspy things. The zucchinis are down the block at a community garden with many flowers.
Not just pollinators. For the first time in my life I can keep the lights on in the evening with the windows open, because hardly any insects fly in. Depressing.
I’m in MA and have been noticing a variety of bumblebees and some honeybees. Heat can be a stressor for bee colonies, maybe the heat wave depressed their numbers somewhat.
On July 3, 2024, twenty or more carpenter bees fell from their little holes in my cabaña, and they died; likely due to the ~ 39°C heat. This suggests that millions of carpenter bees were killed in one day in the surrounding region.
May some one hearby has used pesticides? I noted that after the vines were sprayed, near my friends house, the butterfly and bee count dropped and is even now still low after 1.5 months.
