Help! It's a bee apocalypse in my backyard

[chantal]

Does anyone know if the City sprayed for mosquitoes or aphids or something yesterday near Ridgecrest? My god, it's a bee apocalypse in my backyard this morning where thousands of dead bees are piled in front of the hive and thousands more are crawling on the ground as they twitch towards death. Talk about a beekeeper's nightmare.

I'm being a drama queen about it, but it's a total bee catastrophe.

Other local beekeepers tell me that apparently this can happen when someone conducts a pesticide campaign nearby. Does anyone in Fringecrest or from the Env. Health dept have more info?

(Commenters, please be kind. I'm actually really sad about this. You can't imagine how terrible it is to see thousands of the critters you're trying to care for dying en masse.)

[Grumpy]

Chantal, Seriously, I'm so sorry for you loss! This must be heartbreaking.

[Just Al...]

Really does frighteningly sound like that colony collapse disorder....gotta have bees to pollinate stuff!

I don't know about the Nob Hill area, but they were spraying around Winrock a few days ago...

[Flaca]

We can always have our illiterate young crawl around with Q-tips to pollinate our crops, since our jobs are outsourced. I don't mean to sound cruel, but without bees, what do we do?
I live within walking distance of Winrock, but I was cleaning inside yesterday. I need to go out and see if the little sexy girls are visiting and making love to my Russian Sage. If not, I need to use Q-tips on my vege garden.
My X had a small kitchen garden where ever he was in 'Nam. The bees died off from Agent Orange and mosquito conttrol around bases, so he crawled around with Q-tips. It's a habit that he never broke-breaking a tassel off of corn and gentlely shaking it over the corn, Q-tips for everything else, very shallow pans of fresh water to try to keep bees out of poisoned water, which he basically had to drink and bathe in from 1963-1972.

[Brendan]

I'm not an expert, but isn't the thing about ccd that the bees disappear, not die by the thousands on front of the hive? This sounds like something local.

[chantal]

Well I still don't know what happened yesterday/this week that poisoned my bees, but here's what I've learned:

• Yes, the City and County spray for mosquitoes.
• The pesticides they use are Aqua-Reslin and Scourge which contain pyrethoids.
• Pyrethoids, according to this govt website, are "toxic to bees, fish, and other aquatic life forms."

So it looks like Albuquerque may have an annual program to kill off local pollinators. Maybe Mayor Marty can launch a "Save Albuquerque Bees" campaign or something ;-)

[Adelita]

Chantal, Mayor Marty can call the program "The B". Bad joke, I know. Sorry.

But I am truly sorry about your bees.

[secret squirrel]

Very sad to hear about your bees. I live in fringecrest and have a very sensitive sense of smell. I noticed a very strong pesticide smell in my yard yesterday when I came home and it was still strong later in the evening when I was working on the garden. My neighbor likes to use roundup (ugh! why dear god, why? she has children and pets, are weeds that hard to pull by hand?) and I assumed she went on a spraying spree with the stuff. The ordor remained this morning. Pesticides are evil.

[Robin]

Round-Up REEKS! such a foul smell...
I remember camping as a kid in Myrtle Beach, S.C. in the 70's, and before the pesticide trucks would dispense their DEET or whatever it was... an air-raid type warning would go off and we would all run like crazy to escape the 'cloud' - FUN!

anywho, the least Mayor McCheese could do would be to give us a little warning when the cloud is coming, especially since we need bees...

[dog breath]

Well lets see your options are competition, predation, disease, anthropomorphic agents.

The first two can occur if an an africanized colony was going to take over your bee hive, kill off the colony, but there would be casualties on both sides. you can't distinguish the africanized ones. Are there any other insects in there?

#3 seldom does disease work overnight... its usually a "bell shaped" death curve.

that last is your most parsimonious explanation, ... a nasty neighbor with a can of raid, or that the bees were drinking/feeding on a source that was polluted with pesticide.

Try calling the county ag extension office to see if they will test them for pesticide.

[chantal]

Hi Reginald, thanks for the feedback.

I'm nearly certain it's the last option on your list as my hive was incredibly strong and the die-off was sudden and total. Additionally, the bees are exhibiting classic signs of poisoning: twitching and the like.

After a bit of research, this seems like the guy to contact which I'll do straightaway:

Greg Watson
Assistant Bureau Chief
NM Dept. of Agriculture
Bureau of Ent. & Nursery Industries
MSC-3BA
PO Box 30005
Las Cruces, NM 88003-8005
Phone [phone]
Fax [phone]
Email [e-mail]

[Fred C Dobbs]

I am very sorry to hear of this. We all lose in these situations. The carte blanche use of pesticides are destroying entire eco systems. It is completely ignorant. In the name of ridding one insect, we kill how many beneficial insects. On a personal level I am saddened for you, my brother is also a bee keeper.

[chantal]

So... I've been totally unable to track down what happened to my bees who are nearly all dead now.

The City says they didn't spray for mosquitoes this week. The Dept of Ag can't test the bees unless they know what substance they're looking for.

At this point, I guess my only consolation is that my 5 year old nieces are coming to town tomorrow and they're determined to have a bee funeral.