Dear All, There are so few honeybee hives left populated hat, according to THE WEEK of 2/29/08, p 34, Haagen-Dazs will be limiting its flavor line to avoid strawberries, raspberries, almonds, & perhaps other farm goods as well.  When will these trials & tribulations end?  Yours in Him, Deb

we have 150 hives and are adding 50 more in the spring

we are blessed and have had no colony collaspe we had a small mite problem

but that was gone before the end of summer last year we have sourwood

wildflower and really great apple blossom 

we do use our honey and sell to a small co-op , we make candle , and other bee products and yes we do rent our bees in our area

gayla50:

really great apple blossom 

OOOOH that sounds so good!  My favorite is desert wildflower, it is so thick and dark and very good. Edey

Food crops would be in serious danger without the pollination of bees. There are other insects, and some birds that pollinate as they go around, but none as well as bees. Hopefully a resistant strain will be found or a cure for the disease before it is too late.

In another venue: I wonder what happened to all the hype over killer bees? They were supposed to have been a serious threat by now. Maybe they've successfully mixed in with the calmer bees?Edey

 Ooh we love sourwood honey. Always had it when we lived in NC. Good with hot bread for breakfast. One thing that I miss in Vt. Babs

I've been following the storyline for a couple of years.  I have a lovely dwarf cherry tree out in the front yard.  Last Spring, we lost the whole crop due to a week long freeze, after the blossoms came out. If the weather goes OK this year, I still wonder about the bees. Our little veggie garden doesn't produce the nice big tomatoes and green peppers like it use to.

 Well, it seems that they have found the problem.  Some kind of bee virus from Italy or that part of the world. Makes you stop and think about how a change of events could produce big problems in our food production. Glad to hear that not all areas are affected.  I have notice the big jump in honey prices...along with everything else.

Hey BABS.... you gotta save that honey for homemade buttermilk biscuits!

 Yeah, we may go to Tenn in June for a short visit. DD will graduate from HS and she is in the School of tomorrow program. Their headquarters are in Nashville. They do a graduation there for all the homeschool graduates in their program. We are deciding if can afford to go. Honey will be on my list to buy and bring back.  Also, livermush, Sundrop and Cheerwine for the kids. I will be bringing a cooler with me. Lots of Southern foods that you cant buy in Vt. Babs

I became a novice Beekeeper in 2005, lost a hive in 2007, but think I found out or figured out that it was my fault, sprayed some stuff to kill out Poison Ivy it may have been the cause of the hive dying out?

Anyway in my humble opinion, I think we as a whole are killing our bees, because of our use of the insecticides and herbicides we think we need to spray or spread on our fields/lawns. I think that we are putting this stuff on the grass and the bees are getting into it, and carrying it back to the hive,  thus spreading it throughtout the hives and killing the bees who have visited the flowers on which we have sprayed/spread this killer. Of course I can't prove it, and since I only have one hive now, had to incorporate the two I had into one last year, the first on, had swarmed and was a weak hive so I combined them to make one strong hive to make it survive the winter. Hope to make them back into two this spring, as soon as the weather warms up, to be able to get back into the hive and see if it is strong enough with enough bees to divide into.

I just got to extract honey last summer for the first time. Boy is that stuff good. My very own honey, the first. I use it in my tea, all the time. DH uses it on fresh hot biscuits, but we use it more for the tea.

Hope the Colony Collapse will soon be a distant memory but... who knows for sure?

I like my bees, and enjoy watching them come to the porch, and fly around the wildflowers we have here. I am planning on planting more wildflowers here, to keep them happy and home, at least that is the idea, they may not want to co-operate. LOL

I love bees....I find them extremely fascinating to watch. And of course, I love to see them working hard in my garden!! However, I'm not a big honey fan, but Brian likes it a lot. I think this summer, I'm going to try and find a local honey producer, as I've read somewhere that consuming honey produced locally, can help stave off seasonal allergies.

My neighbor has 3 or 4 hives that she uses to produce honey every year. While I love for bees to pollinate things, that is about all I want to see of them. I got stung by a honey bee a few years back and it made me sick. It wasn't an allergic reaction, just the location of the sting. Still, I suppose we could always try using a paint brush if the bee population seems to be low, it's just a lot of work that is best left to the bees.