Rosedale Bees Update

The honey bees at Rosedale did not survive the winter and spring.  Recently, Tom Smedley, Carey, and Ardis set up two new bee hives in the Southwest corner to replace them. As you probably know, we are losing honey bees worldwide at an alarming rate because of many things such as insecticides, disease, air pollution, habitat destruction, stress and more (bee colony collapse).  A couple suggestions for the Rosedale honey bees, please avoid activity around the hives and loud noises which are stressful for the bees. When stressed, bees may swarm and move to a less stressful home. When walking near the bees, try to avoid their flight pattern, which is a straight line when leaving the hive.  Staying further away, you will avoid interrupting their flight and less likely to be stung.  We are also trying to communicate with the Denver schools regarding their spraying schedule as we feel that weed spraying this spring may be the cause of the demise of one of the hives.

Here are some interesting facts about honey bees: honey bees perform about 80% of the pollination in the world and increase production of produce by one-third.  A single bee colony can pollinate 300 million flowers each day.  The following website shows what would happen if we did not have honey bees in the world. “A picture is worth a thousand words” as shown in this website about what our grocery stores would look like if we lost honey bees.   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/17/store-without-bees_n_5500380.html