Missoula, MT is a hub in the Rocky Mountains. Five major east, south, west, and north meet here, and the valleys connecting these extend into neighboring states and up into Canada. That means that during fire season, we get smoke from CA, OR, WA, Idaho, and Canada, often from all five directions. Missoula sits in a bowl in the Rocky Mountains. My house sits on a Mount Stones, overlooking the valley. On good days, we enjoy the blue skies and mountain peaks of our Big Sky country. On bad smoke days, I can't see the nearest neighbors house.
When particulate levels are high, our bees stay home, don't forage. That does impact honey production. When we see a bit of haze, the bees still fly, and they don't demonstrate any unusual behavior. As the smoke gets thicker, they tend to get pissy. At some point, they, like us, hunker down in case a fire rolls through.
When Mt St Helen's erupted, we got about 2 inches of volcanic dust, coming down like snow. That stopped the bees from foraging. But, as the day's continued, I saw bees from my observation hive go back to work. I wondered how they got to the flowers under the dust - the landscape looked like a grey, alien planet. Looking at a native plants garden on the campus, I was astonished to see bees fly up to blooms, then buzz them, using their wings to blow dust off, before they collected nectar or pollen.
Jerry
***********************************************
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
|
