Whatever you did Amanda the weather was good in Branson today

60°/87°/62°
Sunny. South wind 5 to 15 mph.

Britnay,
Welcome!
Your garden sounds delicious! We all like to eat, lol!

Hi Mac,
Welcome!
Not a good garden year in Iowa either.
I mow every four days. We had a rainy summer!

Hot again this week. Mosquitoes are dying off a little. They still haven't sprayed because of threat of rain or it's too windy. I hope they can soon. It sounds like severe storms here overnight.

Sally - you live in town? You want them to spray for mosquitos? The spraying being done for Zefa or what ever that is has killed tens of millions of honeybees alone - not to even mention all the other incidentals including wild bees, butterflies, etc.

David,
I do live in town, surrounded by fields and water holding ditches. The spray they use doesn't kill all. I imagine it's pyrethrum based. The killing of all the bees made me sick. They had to know it would kill everything. I still hae all the other flying insects.

Sally,
We've had heavy rainfalls but too far in between to help the garden. I'd like less rain, more often.

I'm no fan of bugs but we had very few honey bees this year. Most of the pollinators were bumblebees. A lot of what we grew was showing what appears to be insufficient pollination. We try to keep insecticide use to a bare minimum and only during the late evening when the pollinators are gone.

Mac,
I'd like to know what pollinated my apple trees. I used to hear the bees buzz all over the blooms. I haven't heard that for a few years now. I see no bees on the blooms either. We do no spraying. But we still have apples.

Sally,
You can do a search for "non-bee pollinators" which might give you some answers. I'm not at all up to speed on how a lot of plants are pollinated, but always fall back on the customary "honeybee as primary pollinator" idea. I know some plants are self-pollinating and many are pollinated by other insects or even the wind. I'd be curious to see what answer you come up with or perhaps someone on the forum has an idea or personal experience. We haven't had apple trees on the property for several years.

Mac,
Luckily many other bee types and insects pollinate. They say the bumblebee may have to take over for the honey bee. Trouble is, some plants are bee specific.
We do have neighbors with apple trees, but not close enough for wind pollination.

http://homeguides.sfgate.com/t...

But I have a Famous/Snow Apple, Criterion, Red Gravenstein and a Johnathon. The last two newly planted a couple of years ago.

Sally,

Interesting. I certainly don't have an answer. But your trees are somehow getting pollinated so that's a good thing. We have looked into possibly setting up a couple beehives but our village won't allow them. I guess we're stuck with mostly bumblebees unless we can manage to attract more honeybees. We've had good success with hand-pollinating our squash and pumpkins though.

Until I joined here I never paid attention to polination and just figured nature takes care of itself Maybe I should be more observant. We do have lots of bees though

I did a speech last Saturday - me on Monarchs, one guy on birds and one bees. The bee guy has lost > 60 % of his hives in 2 years.

Mac,
I don't think I have the patience to hand pollinate.
What a shame you can't have bees. The hives are a lot of work. I just plant as many bee friendly plants as I can.

Ginny,
Cherish those bees!

David,
Pretty serious stuff about the bees. If they are having the mites it's hard to save them. I still think the field spraying is hurting them too. The world is getting scary and big chemical companies don't care.

Such a shame to hear about the lost bees! I have heard a similar story locally. We should all be made aware of what our chemicals are doing to the demise of our planet.

One of the guys at work has bee hives and he brought a couple of empty hives to work in the back of his truck. As the truck sat there throughout the day, bees started swarming around the empty hives. Pretty scary when I came back from lunch and parked next to him!

Sally,
Squash and pumpkins are easy to hand-pollinate since the male and female flowers are close together. We use a q-tip.

We're surrounded by commercial agriculture (corn mostly) and have no control over what chemicals the farmers use. We have lots of clover and honeybees are particularly attracted to it. We've seen very few this year. While we don't currently have a problem with the mosquitos that carry the Zika virus, a lot of beekeepers through the country have had serious bee losses due to indiscriminate spraying by many mosquito control agencies trying to eradicate them.

Mac

Vicki,
Laughing! That would be a shock, but I would sure cheer the bees on!

Mac,
Corn and soybeans surround my town. I live on the edge so the next block north is country. Across the road is a fertilizer plant/corn dryer. Talk about chemicals! They used to finish out by emptying their sprayer over there. I never understood why they didn't do that in the field. Since the ground water contamination issue all over town, they had to replace a lot of their dirt. They don't empty the sprayer anymore... There is also a nice tree line/weed barrier between us and them. Someone told us they are going to cut the trees down, gravel it and park their ammonia tanks over there. Our worst nightmare, but I can see why. They are lowland behind the elevator and it flooded when they were putting up a bin one year.

Tree line across the road at sunset.

Neat pic Sally.
Our little village is also surrounded by vast croplands of corn and soybeans. At the edge of town a huge bin complex was built a couple of years ago. They must have reached capacity as they are now making a mountain of soybeans next to the bins. Two years ago it was a mountain of corn -

yaaaaaaaaay - we're getting stuff done!! Bob has the decking & floor for our den, and now one wall (with placement for a garden door & a window). I'm getting excited!!!
Next Wed / Thurs we're getting $$ from Calgary for our "inconvenience fund" for them closing down the Park we used to live in, and that's going to go to pay for more renovations. SO excited!! Here's the first wall & our decking/floor

pepper23 said: