Good Year gone bad.

[Joebee]

I live in A hot dry part of the state of Montana. This is my third year of trying to have bees.My first year was A total drought We were out of flowers by first of Aug. I killed the bees so I could salvage the comb and get A small amount of honey. I only had two hives but it was such A bad feeling to kill the poor little girls. The honey was the best that I had ever eaten. I think that I got three gal's. that year.
Last year I had the addiction real bad so I expanded to five hives. We had A strange spring. I hived the bees and it started to rain. For the next month it was raining and cold or it was raining with A good wind and usually cold. Well I lost two queens in the first month. I shook the bees from the queenless hives out in front of the queen rite hives. That helped my three hives grow A little bit. I made it through the year with three hives. They overwintered real well and this spring they built up beautifully. I did get to extract two gal's. of wonderful honey. And yes it was the best honey that I had ever eaten.
This year the addictive personality got the better of me and my common sense went away. I wanted to get five gal's. of honey so I figured more hives better chance to get A good harvest. I bought eight packages and I had three hives, and the neighbor gave me her hive. So now with twelve hives I should have lots of honey if mother nature will just quoperate just A wee little bit.
Somewhere around the end of June the grasshoppers started to come alive. There was more flowers than I have ever seen the bees are working double overtime packing pollin and nector. I was so excited to see the hives start to fill. Well one night my electric fencer died so I took it to get fixed. The night before I was to pick the fencer up A bear came visiting. There went two of my hives into the stomach of A black bear. But that is OK. because I still see flowers but the grasshoppers are really starting to build up. The ground is starting to move with the filthy things. I sprayed two hundred gal. of liquid seven and saw that I was killing lots of hoppers but I wasn't putting A dent in the population so I gave up. I went to A rancher friends pasture and saw real grasshoppers. I saw them in all stages of life and death. They were spraying A bad chemical called buckenier.They had dead hoppers three inches deep under the fences.
At that time I had A wee bit of work done on my back and I come home to heal up so I can be A bee keeper. As I am laying around with the swamp cooler running my eyes would start to run and my lips would burn and I couldn't figure out why I was crying because I feel better than I have in thirty years. So why the tears I ask myself and then I remember. Someone must be spraying for hoppers. Well it never dawned on me that my girls were in trouble because the grasshoppers are in the dry and the bees are in the green. Also I was on some heavy duty pain pills so the thinker wasn't working quite properly. Well as the cows eat the clover and the rancher cuts the alfalfa there is soon A shortage of flowers so the bees went to the dryland and didn't come home. In the dryland around here there is A wonderful weed called knapweed it is hated by many but it is A survivor that puts out lots of wonderful honey. I got A friend to walk out to the hives and open them up today. It ts so sad when you look in the hive and see maybe A thousand bees at the most. No nector, no eggs, no brood, no honey. The yellow jackets and bald faced hornets were having A smorgasboard. If I combined them all together I don't think that I would fill two brood boxes then we still need to figure out how to feed with that many yellow jackets and hornets.
It is A good thing that I live in the land of next year. Next year I am going to try A different place and I am hopping that it works better than this place.
                             JOE

[Kathyp]

that's kind of sad!  next year can't be worse......

[NasalSponge]

I killed the bees

 :buttkick:

[charmd2]

liquid seven isn't any good either.   sounds like you have very heavy pesticide use in your area.

[Rebel Rose Apiary]

This sounds all too familiar.....I too had a bad year and lots of spraying in my area. Stick with it, that is what readlly makes you a beekeeper.

Brenda

[bakerboy]

I sprayed two hundred gal. of liquid seven

So you pumped two hundred gallons of insecticides and are blaming your bee losses on you neighbors ?

Unless the grasshoppers are carrying away your children, maybe I'd tone down my pesticide spraying.

[BearCountry]

We don't have anywhere near that much of a grasshopper issue in northern IL.  Do they swarm up like that every year there, or is it just a fluke because of your weather or something else?  With that much of a pest problem I can see why it would be tempting to spray a whole farm & fleets worth of Sevin, but I have to agree with bakerboy, you have to expect that any pesticides you spray will have some impact on your bees, directly or indirectly.  Esp. 200 gallons worth.  Not saying your neighbor didnt have a big part of your bees' problems this year, but Sevin is tough stuff.

And if pesticide use in my area was enough to make my lips burn and eyes water, I would really think about complaining or relocating.