Content-Type: |
text/plain; charset=UTF-8 |
Date: |
Mon, 5 Feb 2018 14:20:32 +0000 |
Reply-To: |
|
Subject: |
|
MIME-Version: |
1.0 |
Message-ID: |
|
Content-Transfer-Encoding: |
quoted-printable |
Sender: |
|
From: |
|
Parts/Attachments: |
|
|
" don't forget to reduce that a bit more for feral hives which have always been there also. not sure what number to assign them but they would be a factor. "
I thought about ferals and simply have no idea how to approach that topic. Fifty years ago locally we had a decent population of ferals I think. I am not sure we have very many at all today. Guys that do cut outs tell me it is not very uncommon to find a marked queen in a cut out. Hard to call those ferals. I know guys that cut trees for a living and ask them about finding bee trees. It very seldom happens. Less than one a year. Remember, those guys are cutting old trees that often have hollows in them. I know two naturalists who work for parks and spend most of every summer in the woods about finding ferals. They have never found one. In general a colony in a tree only lasts one to two years and is then dead. All in all I think it fair to say locally we have under one feral per square mile today. A big drop happened in the late 70s due to an AFB epidemic. Over a couple of years about half the registered hives in the county were burned. I think pretty much all the ferals died of AFB. I know if I get two miles from anyone with a hive and look at prime flowers to attract bees it gets real hard to find even one. When I find a reasonable number and go looking for hives I generally find a yard within flying distance if I hunt hard enough. There are bee-less places within two miles of my place.
On the flip side I have seen bees in places where I was pretty sure there were no domestics. I saw a decent number of bees three or four years ago on the very top of the highest point in WVA.
In IA when I was a kid back in the late 40s and 50s I think it was close to zero ferals. Most of the state simply has too few trees to support many ferals. And many of those were American Elms which I do not think ever get hollows.
I will tell you that the OH hive count data put out by the state is meaningless. We have a law that you are supposed to register every apiary site each year at a cost of $5 per site. Most small bee keepers do not register and some larger ones with 20 or more hives do not register. Yet, that is the data used to produce a hive count. In the county I live in that count is likely at most 30% of the actual hives that exist. When I talk to guys who were bee inspectors for the county in the past they agree with me that most hives are not registered.
Dick
***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
|
|
|