Guys and gals, thank you for your condolences :). I had a good cry last night, just like Annette did. Got over it from the help of my loving husband. I am very much OK this morning, with a new day, sleep always brings relief from stress in our lives. Annette, Tig and JP, I am sorry to hear losses that all of you have taken with bees dying from poisoning, and you Annette, some disease. Annette, did you ever find out what happened to your poor little colony? I lost track of your posts.
I have several agendas today. First is to get out to the bees as soon as all the kids are off to school (and that is many, lol). I will clean up around the hive perfectly, give a new bottomboard and clean the old one. I will check through the hive and see if there are any bees left, especially looking for her majesty.
The last poisoning I had did not affect all the bees in that colony. It certainly set them back, but I strengthened this last poisoned colony (after about a week, to make sure no more bees were carrying poison around in the colony) with some frames of brood and bees from a colony that was boiling over with bees. That boiling over colony did not have any queen cells, so I may have helped to prevent some swarming, so that was all good.
One of my biggest agendas over the next couple of days is to compile a little newsletter about the honeybees, their wonderful effect on our lives and how important it is to be very aware when spraying pesticides and herbicides in their gardens. I will distribute these newsletters to each home within a certain radius so that people are more aware of how honeybees can be so adversely affected by the chemicals.
I know that most people are not even aware of any damages that can be done to the honeybees and other wonderful pollinators of this world through "poisions". It is not their fault, they just don't know.
I was one of these too, before I understood and even thought how my actions with chemicals can affect nature. People must be taught about these things, and this is another agenda in my life. Hopefully I can make a small difference in this large world. I may even compose something for our local newspaper, I feel I have a mission that must be accomplished, there are many beekeepers that must have issues with poison. Anyways, off to a wonderful and beautiful day, a bonus is, the sun is shinin', after 4 days of rainy, poopy weather. Cindi