In the winter of 2006, a strange phenomenon fell upon honeybee hives across the country. Without a trace, millions of bees vanished from their hives. A precious pollinator of fruits and vegetables, the disappearing bees left billions of dollars of crops at risk and threatened our food supply. The epidemic set researchers scrambling to discover why honeybees were dying in record numbers -- and to stop the epidemic in its tracks before it spread further.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/bees/

Try to imagine our modern world without apples, pears, citrus fruits, carrots, grapes, olives, tomatoes, and almonds. Then try to imagine our California wildlands devoid of beautiful spring wild flowers. About 1/3 of our temperate vegetable, fruit, and nut crops, along with most of our wildland flowers, depend on the pollinating services of bees. If we extend our thinking to the tropics, virtually all flowering plants depend on animals for their pollination, and the majority in the New World and Old World tropics are bees. The world’s star pollinators, bees, play an important, but sometimes invisible role in our everyday lives.


Pollinator Stars: Bees depend on pollen and nectar for their reproduction and survival. They are specially equipped to collect these resources. As they buzz from one flower to another, pollen gets caught in specialized hairs and other special pollen-collecting body structures. Some of this pollen makes it back to the nest to feed bee babies (larvae) but some of it accidentally rubs off onto the reproductive parts of other flowers. If the flowers are of the same species, cross-pollination will likely occur. Nectar (or sugar water) fuels their foraging flight and also is added to nest cells to feed baby bees.

Celebrate Diversity: Bees are very diverse in species and in habits, which makes them especially efficient at pollinating diverse flower species such as ours in California. There are about 1,500 different bee species in California, ranging from the giant black Xylocopa, or carpenter bees, to the tiny Andrena, which look more like winged ants than bees, to the gorgeous metallic green “flying jewels” known as Osmia. Only the common European honey bee (Apis mellifera), the Alfalfa Leaf-Cutter bee (Megachile rotundata) and a close relative, Megachile apicalis, are exotic to northern California.

Each of these bee species is specially equipped for the flowers with which they come into contact. Their body structures and even their sense of timing have evolved to form complex seasonal and spatial relationships with diverse plant species. In other words, certain flowers bloom and certain bee species emerge from their nests according to a tight schedule so that the right bees have access to the right plants during specific times of year.

Det här var väldigt tydligt i somras knappt inga bin eller getingar, de tål inte chemtrails....