where did my pollinators go?

last year i had bumble bees and hummingbirds everywhere on my property all over my flowering fruit bushes and apple trees. this year i have 7 elderberries
that are covered w/ blossoms that are falling off without being pollinated. this spring my hummingbird feeders went untouched. last spring there were dozens around. I've seen a few small bumbles in my raspberries but not many. i don't spray or use herbicide and both my neighbors have many fruit and apple trees as well so there should be plenty around. i leave piles of brush for the bumbles and even made mason bee blocks to encourage them to breed nearby. I'm in a fairly rural area. i have a lot of fruit bushes and raspberries. this really worries me!  any ideas what might have ran off the pollinators?

My first thought was to see if you'd had an unusually cold winter. The reports I'm finding suggest otherwise. The next thing I looked at was the drought conditions. Are you in one of the areas suffering from drought, right now?  

Casie Becker wrote:My first thought was to see if you'd had an unusually cold winter. The reports I'm finding suggest otherwise. The next thing I looked at was the drought conditions. Are you in one of the areas suffering from drought, right now?  

quite the opposite . we had a very wet late spring early summer and the winter was a lot warmer than the 2 before it. i just talked to my neighbor who also has a lot of berry bushes and fruit trees also and he's noticed  they are lacking at his place also. we aren't near any cities or even big towns so i can't blame it on pollution. i should be looking at a huge crop of elderberries by next month but all the flowers are falling with no little green berry starting to grow! i sat in front of those bushes for a half hr. on a nice calm sunny day and i didn't see one bee or butterfly land on those huge flower clusters! just the sweet smell should bring in at least a few! its very disturbing!

Sorry, that was my best guess. I've seen fewer hummingbirds than usual this year, but I'm a long way from you and have plenty of other pollinators.

2 years ago i planted most of my berry bushes . back then the only thing on my property to bring them in was my feeders and my raspberry patch. i had tons of bumble and mason bees all over the flowers. the field next to me is all chokecherry bushes and they were loaded with bees. my humming bird feeder was a combat zone of hummingbirds fighting for a spot. now my berry bushes have tons of flowers and no bees. didn't see 1 humming bird either. maybe its just a off year. i hope so or I'm never going to get berries from any of my bushes. I'm going to call the cooperative extension to see what they have to say about this. thanks for your input. you folks still roasting down there? i was stationed in el paso when i was in the army.

Texas always roasts in the summer. Though Austin trades some of the heat in for extra humidity. Still not as bad as Houston. This year hasn't been as bad as I've seen in the past. As much as we've had 100 degrees in the forecast, we've actually stayed under that for most of the summer.

As far as I can tell, we've actually managed to schedule our vacation so that we're going to be out of state for the hottest week of the year. In about two hours we're leaving for Montana.

Do you have much planted other than the berry bushes to draw in the pollinators?

i have planted strips of wildflowers and lupines around the edges of the property and the field next door. all my neighbors have apple trees and various flowers. i have 13 varieties of berry bushes that flower from late april through the summer. i can't see how i could make it more attractive than that! yeah el paso was hot but no humidity. it doesn't get much over 80 in the summer up here but when it does its sticky as hell! just came back from s.c. was 100 and 80% humidity! was glad to come home!

We plant known flowers especially for what we want to attract.  Hummingbirds are attracted to red so we try to plant red or orange flowers.  We also put red solo drinking cups on sticks to attract them.  Best wishes on attracting them.

This year we are seeing something similar.  DH complained that the vegetable garden has no bees.   I checked the Monarch Garden and I have lots of bumblebees on the blue sage.  Only one honey bee on the firewheels.  Later I noticed some sort of bee (?) that looks like a spider with wings.

I found this thread that I think may explain what is going on.  https://permies.com/t/36519/critters/nectary-plants-improve-pollination

Let's say for an example:  The vegetable and Monarch Garden is in Zone 1, the water trough is Zone 2 and the Sunflower Patch is Zone 3.  A few bumblebees and various bees and butterflies in Zone 1; Honeybees can be found in Zone 2 getting water and lots of honeybees in Zone 3 on the sunflowers.  So I think some of the information is that thread is correct.

So the question is how do we pollinate the vegetables in the absence of pollinators?  What vegetables are self pollinated?  Which ones must we hand pollinate?

We have corn, eggplant, squash, spinach and watermelons that I think we may need to hand pollinate.  I think the tomatoes, peppers and beans will self pollinate?

Honey bees are colony feeders - they preferentially go for a single source that they whole colony can work simultaneously. They recruit foragers to that single source through a combination of scent and the waggle dance. In general you don't see honey bees spread diffusely over a wide range of different flower types, unless there are no large single sources available.

In my case the honey bees are hitting the Lime trees and the blackberries preferentially over everything else at the moment.

On the other hand, bumblebees are more opportunistic and will forage over multiple sources within a smallish area of their nest. Maybe you simply don't have many nearby nests this year?

well this is a new summer and some of my hummingbirds are back. seen a few bumbles and some mason bees around. not huge amounts but enough to do the job. we don't have honeybees up here as its too cold for them. some people have them but the hive needs to be moved in a shed by nov. or they will freeze. 10 of my 13 varieties of fruit trees and bushes have blossoms on them. and i added 6 more types. thimbleberry, ohio treasure black raspberry, arctic raspberry, anne raspberry, caroline raspberry, and regent serviceberry. going to be busy making jam, juices and freezing fruit!

Could your spider with wings be a tarantula hawk? That's actually a species of wasp. Supposedly the second most painful sting in the world, but except a few hours of screaming agony they don't actually do much damage. We had a huge population of them a couple of years ago and they weren't aggressive like hornets or yellow jackets. I actually don't think I've ever heard of anyone being stung by one except that guy who was purposefully getting stung to rate the different pain levels. I'm not suggesting it doesn't happen, just saying they're not primed to sting at the least excuse.

I mostly see huge amounts of honeybees on the matchstick plants. I suspect that is a very good pollen producer because every bee I see working them has full saddle bags. Could planting something like that help them raise more young?

I usually hear people talking about the nectar sources for food and honey, but I've picked up an impression that they need the high protein in pollen for raising brood. Do people planting for they bees also select plants based on pollen production?

It doesn't look like a tarantula hawk.  It is fat and gray about 1/2" long and almost as fat. It doesn't look like it has wings but it appears to fly to the next plant.  They are all over the firewheels but they are not there early in the morning.

Not sure about Maine, but this has been a very weird year for foliage and associated fauna in Indiana.  Most of the US had an unseasonably warm winter, and many people are reporting less insects, go figure.  I have some lesser bumble bees, but not many honeybees (I do not personally keep any but usually have a thriving contingent on my property) and no greater bumbles.  Walking across fields of white clover and I can walk several yards without disturbing a pollinator.  Also, we had some cyclical cicadas emerge four years early!  Foliage is still thin on some trees like my Montmorecy Pie Cherry, but huge cherry crop.  Many trees have small leaves and just look somewhat anemic.  Again, a strange year.

we had a average to cold winter with average snowfall with a long, cold, wet spring. everything was late to put on leaves and blossoms. up to 2 weeks late. bumble bees and mason bees usually aren't bothered by this as they stay dormant till' the temps. are high enough to come out. hummingbirds have a hard time if they arrive up here and there isn't any blossoms yet so i make sure my feeders are out by mid may to help them out.

Those bees that I thought looked like spiders might be gray mining bees or some sort of ground bee.  I have not found a good image of one yet.  They may have done their thing and seem to be gone.  Many of the flower heads have torn up looking damage that I think they may have done.

While I see lots of bees, I don't see a lot of the same kind other than the ones I mentioned.

Where I live is very rural and mostly goat and sheep ranching so I doubt that there are many beehives other than hobby beekeepers if any. So where do honeybees and mason bees live?  I have seen some metallic bees but not many.  We have lots of brush piles so I am assuming that they are good homes for bees?

I've read that honeybees can travel up to 5 miles from a hive for pollen. masons reproduce in holes in trees then die shortly after. i put out blocks with holes in them to encourage them to stay near my plants. bumbles live in holes in the ground and under brush piles. i have plenty of places for them here also.the metallic colored ones are a type of mason bee but there are like 130 types of them in n. america alone. there are also many types of leaf cutter and sweat bees that pollinate also. honeybees only do a small amount of pollination compared to the native bees.

Whatever it was that cause the damage to the firewheel flowers may have caused  chlorosis.  Every day the firewheel plants get paler and paler.  I assumed it was that insect that I thought was a "spider looking bee".  There is no damage to the other flowers that are planted among the firewheels.  I have been cutting the firewheels back so the verbena and marigolds can get more light.  I am leaving the firewheels as long as they are flowering.  This was there best year which makes having them sick so sad.

I have been wondering if the disease on the firewheels will hurt the pollinators? If so I will cut them down.

won't hurt the bees but they may spread the disease to other plants .

I just came across this thread after walking through my garden shaking my head in extreme consternation. Despite having had a very mild winter and more than enough rain in spring and early summer our gardens are also not producing well. I take photos of the garden periodically throughout the year to keep as visual references for how well everything is doing (or not) and to keep track of when I can expect blooms, fruits, etc. The differences are startling!

This year plants that are normally lush and producing like crazy are less than half the usual size and can barely manage to stay alive, much less produce anything. The Malabar spinach which invariably pops up on its own and nearly takes over the garden by July every year, has barely made it to the top of its first trellis now, in August, and all the leaves it has managed are speckled and mottled with thousands of micro-sized white dots. It has never had pest problems of any kind in the past and always produces succulent deep green leaves when everything else is wilted from heat or going to seed, so that is distinctly unusual! My tomatoes and peppers didn't even start setting fruits until late June -- despite putting them out two months earlier. Now they each have a few fruits, but they are tending toward being undersized and the plants themselves look lanky and starved. (We grow organic and have NEVER used insecticides, herbicides or even chemical fertilizer on anything in 25 years, AND our plants are lavishly treated to all the good compost and well-seasoned manure they could ever want, so they shouldn't be lacking anything.) I just can't figure it out! Even the native trees -- persimmons, hickories and oaks, walnuts, plums, elderberries, etc. have zero fruits on them. I hate to even think what a cold winter will do to the wildlife here with no mast or forest fruits to eat this year.

I was saying to my husband yesterday, that I thought the problem might be lack of pollinators because other than a few bees and a couple of butterflies, I hadn't see anything for days. Normally we have a lot of carpenter bees, mason bees and wild honey bees (we live next door to thousands of acres of national forest and have found swarms on a couple of occasions, so we're pretty sure they aren't from commercial or backyard hives). He said he hadn't seen a single hummingbird this year (I saw one a couple of weeks ago on my red salvia). However, there is the problem with even our foliage plants like the Malabar (forget lettuces, kale, collards, etc. even arugula won't grow this year and it usually self-seeds and goes everywhere) that can't be explained by lack of pollinators.

Looking at the Malabar spinach, I thought how much it looked like seedling plants that have been grown inside then taken out and exposed to too much sun all at once. You know how they get the big white blotches on the leaves from having their cells basically exploded by too much sunlight? It looks a bit like that, which got me to wondering ... could part of the problem be irradiation? I'm not talking about ordinary hot weather -- even though we are nearly always in the 90s in summer here (and even into the 100s periodically). What I mean is that the sun seems brighter than it used to be. We can't even go out into the garden between noon and around 3pm without practically having heat stroke! (And we aren't "sissies" dependent upon air conditioning either -- I haven't lived in a place with air conditioning for well over 40 years, so I know how to be as comfortable in heat as possible.) No, this seems more like being under a direct flame. If you step into the shade, you're instantly comfortable again, despite the heat. Does that make sense?   I'm wondering if the ozone layer has gotten a lot worse than even science claims. Are they afraid to tell us?

Anyway, just my 2 cents. Anyone else in Missouri or the Ozarks having similar problems?

I'm having pollinator problems right now as well. The neighbors have a paper wasp nest, so I have a lot of these, but not many honey or carpenter bees this year in the back yard. I have lots of flies, different kinds, and butterflies, dragonflies. I was thinking about transplanting some borage into the back, it tends to draw more bees. Pollination has been bad primarily on tomatoes and squash.

[quote=Casie Becker
I usually hear people talking about the nectar sources for food and honey, but I've picked up an impression that they need the high protein in pollen for raising brood. Do people planting for they bees also select plants based on pollen production?

You are so right, Casie: for a hive to thrive, honey bees need good quality pollen. Pollen is a mix of protein and sugars. When CO2 goes high, protein goes low. Our bees are experiencing a "perfect storm": Besides the varroa parasite, now that CO2 is up to more than 400 ppm, the quality of the protein they get is less, so bees have to forage more for pollen -less for nectar-. There is only so much time in the life of a bee to help the hive thrive *and* make a decent crop of honey. https://phys.org/news/2016-04-co2-protein-crucial-pollen-source.html
A honey bee in the summer can live about 4-6 weeks under optimal conditions. [In the winter, when they live on their reserves, they can live 4-6 *months*]. A queen can make new workers in 21 days or 3 weeks. Again under optimum conditions. Except that the conditions are no longer optimum: Reduced habitat due to monocropping, pesticides which reduce the virility of drones [and perhaps the quality of the queen], varroas, and before too long, the queen cannot keep up with the mortality her hive experiences.
This is what we know about honey bees, but all over the pollinator world, the problem is repeated. That is why it is not *just* the honey bee that experiences problems.
I think that varroas are the biggest problem: They have realized that a hive is a perfect incubator for *their* brood. I think that is a new development. They stay in the hive an infect every cell where there is a larvae. Sometimes, the honey bee is coming out with 4-5 varroas already sucking her hemolymph: She is doomed and cannot live more than 3 weeks or less [Again, the Queen needs 3 full weeks to replenish that mortality].

my opinion is that plants created to produce BT in every cell of the plant, and ones which live through repeated application of broad spectrum nutrient chelators are affecting pollinators

Do we know if the CO2 concentrations dip appreciably under the canopy of a forest? I mean, do the plants in the understory experience lower CO2 levels than, say, the field right next door with no trees?

If that's the case, I could see food forests in alley cropping configurations stocked with a pollinator foods libraries (thank you Metallocalypse) that selects more heavily for pollen than nectar producers. I figure that if it is the case that the more CO2-absorbing, oxygen-producing plants in an area, the lower the local CO2 levels (to a point), those will be nutrition oases for pollinators, as every trophic niche is filled, and with more than single varieties of plant, such that there are constant blooms, and as mentioned, the pollen will be of a superior quality to that available outside the oases.

Pollinators also move, it is to be noted. If flooding, drought, or unseasonable temperatures signal to them that they need to seek better accomodations, many will.

I fear that we will need to engineer our environments to ensure the survival of sensitive, crucial species in ways such as this. If the natives need help and can be helped, that's what we might have to do, even if it means importing the viable eggs of solitary species from elsewhere, where the climate might be shifting to be wetter, or drier, or warmer, or colder, for that matter.

But I think it is important to keep the idea of oases in mind. Even in deserts, there can exist islands of life where circumstances conspire to allow it. We can take this idea and use it to regreen whole deserts. I think it reasonable to contemplate using that idea to nurture an oasis of your own, whose area of influence nurtures life all around it. We can do this often simply by increasing water infiltration, putting in sediment traps on slopes, swales where applicable, windbreaks and shade features where necessary to cut down on dessication by wind and sun, and by planting guilds that take up these tasks with the slightest encouragement and start a process of renewal that could be considered by some to be *gasp* invasive.

I visualise it like those overhead shots of centre-pivot irrigation, except the spots of green wouldn't be so uniform, or flat, or so round, but rather extending down plume in a teardrop shape, and starting in a circle three kilometres in diameter, with a single hive of honeybees in the middle, and solitaries distributed in ideal habitats around it.

It also might be a plan to look at the boreal forest. If burned-over areas were overseeded with native pollen-bearing plants, they might benefit from the CO2 sequestration and oxygen respiration of the surrounding, unburned areas. Likewise, communities living in the middle of the boreal that might want to consider fire breaks, considering how flammable people and their stuff is, generally, and might want to stack functions by augmenting pollinator habitat, and maybe the value of the firebreak-turned-pollinator-food-haven as pasture, to keep the forest from reclaiming it.

This, of course, hinges on whether or not there's a localised area of lower CO2 concentration in amongst living plants and trees. This would all still be a great idea even so, but we'd need more planted, growing area to effect change to the CO2 on an atmospheric scale.

But there'd be more pollen for pollinators, even if nutritionally deficient. So we'll have obese bees eating nutritionally hollow McPollen Fingers until we can get the CO2 levels down to manageable levels.

-CK

For a long time, Arthur Firstenberg, author of the book: The Invisible Rainbow, has been sharing research about the impacts of electromagnetic fields on people, wildlife and insects from around the world.

I found the follow excerpt fascinating, where Arthur explains how honey bees and flowers communicate on an electromagnetic level. This is taken from his newsletter: The Most Dangerous Technology Ever Invented Part Two.

"When honey bees perform their waggle dance to inform one another of the location of food sources, it is not only a visual dance but an electromagnetic one. During the dance they generate electromagnetic signals with a modulation frequency between 180 and 250 Hz. And they send another kind of signal, which has been called the "stop" signal, up to 100 milliseconds long, at a frequency of 320 Hz. The stop signal is used when the colony already has too much food, and it causes the dancers to stop dancing and leave the dance floor. Uwe Greggers, at Freie Universität Berlin, discovered that bees will start walking and actively moving their antennae in response to artificially generated electromagnetic fields that imitate these natural signals, even in the absence of any visual or auditory cues. Bees whose antennae he had removed or coated with wax did not respond to these signals.

Pollination is also dependent on electromagnetic communication --between bees and flowers. Bees carry positive charge on their bodies from flying in the global atmospheric electric field, while flowers, being connected to the earth, carry a negative charge. Dominic Clarke, at the University of Bristol, has proved that not only does this facilitate pollen transfer from flowers to bees, but that bees sense and are attracted not only to the colors of flowers but also to the distinct patterns of their electric fields. The electric field of a flower diminishes immediately after being visited by a bee, and other bees "see" this and only visit flowers whose electric field is robust. While honey bees see the fields with their antennae, bumble bees see the fields more with the hairs that cover their bodies, which not only make them such distinctive creatures but also function as a kind of antenna."

Reading Arthur Firstenberg's newsletters can be depressing. But they are chocked full of research information linking the interference of man-made electromagnetic fields on the natural world around us. I like to balance this heavy news with info I find on men and women who are working on promising solutions. One of my favorite examples is Dr. Ibrahim Karim's research and the successful results his team achieved in a regional-wide trial of electro-smog mitigation conducted in two Swiss towns, Hemberg and Herschberg. What I appreciate most about the Biogeometry approach is the desire to elevate the wireless / electrical technologies that already exist in our modern world into something that supports natural vitality (life) instead of denaturing it and causing harm.

At any rate, I think the state of electromagnetic fields is something to consider in relation to the health of pollinator populations. The effect of increased man-made electromagnetic fields is something to consider as a link to the odd fluctuations and decline in pollinators witnessed by so many observers. This awareness requires a more responsible use of such technologies.

Links for those interested:

Arthur Firstenberg's book: The Invisible Rainbow, A History of Electricity & Life
https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/the-invisible-rainbow/

The Most Dangerous Technology Ever Invented Part Two
https://www.cellphonetaskforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/The-Most-Dangerous-Technology-Ever-Invented-Part-Two.pdf

Dr. Ibrihim Karim's work
https://www.biogeometry.ca/home

Thank you.

Chris Kott wrote:  Do we know if the CO2 concentrations dip appreciably under the canopy of a forest? I mean, do the plants in the understory experience lower CO2 levels than, say, the field right next door with no trees?
The answer is "Yes.". CO2 and O2 levels around plants has been carefully monitored. One does not often think about it, but plants obtain adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the ubiquitous energy currency molecule, in a manner almost identical to animals. This process, cellular respiration, uses = requires O2 and releases CO2 into the air or water. So, 24/7 both animals AND plants are taking in O2 and releasing CO2. BUT, most plants do photosynthesis during daylight hours (not 24 hours, but averaging about 12 hours per day = 12/7). In the process of photosynthesis, CO2 is required by the plant to convert light energy into sugar while O2 is released as a byproduct - only during periods of light.
During daylight hours the rate of photosynthesis is MUCH greater than the rate of cellular respiration. The outcome is that, during daylight hours, plants release much more O2 than they take in, while at night they don't release O2. So, research shows that the O2 level in the air around plants goes up during daylight hours and then the O2 level drops at night. Conversely, the CO2 level in the air around plants drops during daylight hours and then the CO2 level goes up at night.

Becky Proske wrote:For a long time, Arthur Firstenberg, author of the book: The Invisible Rainbow, has been sharing research about the impacts of electromagnetic fields on people, wildlife and insects from around the world.  Thank you.

I saw something several years ago about a guy using magnets on his honey bee hives.
I was buying magnets for a woodworking job I was doing so I decided to add a pair of large round magnets for my hive.
I put the together and marked the outside of both magnets then placed one on both North & South sides of my hive.

I don't know how much they helped but I did have a good amount of honey extracted this year where the prior 2 years only enough to overwinter, so left those frames for the bees.