On Mar 6, 9:20 pm, "Alvin E. Toda" <a...@lava.net> wrote:
> In the last several weeks I've only noticed a couple
> bumble bees. Am kind of concern because my lychee tree
> doesn't have too many flowers to begin with, and the
> number of quavas on the tree seem down about 70%. It's
> the white variety. Maybe the number of fruit flies
> will be affected as well. They like the white variety.
> Actually I haven't seen a ripe quava in several weeks
> as well. There's a number of small green ones there but
> not as much as before. I've also seen a butterfly once,
> so I guess some flowers are getting polinated by them
> as well.
>
> Same situation with lemons as with the quavas. We'll
> see how my neighbor's mangos do when the flowers fall
> off and leave the baby mangoes-- if there are any. How
> about you Oahu people? Are you noticing less honey bees
> than before?
Al,
as you know I'm not on Oahu. I still find it very disconcerting that
it's advocated to eradicate the bees rather than trying to develop a
systemic that affects the mites but not the bees. And I'm worried
about
the carpenter bees too - they pollinate my lilikoi -, and for all I
know we
don't know anything about the effect of the varroa mite on carpenter
bees yet. - Not that many people care, because to most they're a pest
and lilikoi are a weed.
And of course, my pet peeve, all these pests came in on legal
shipments
of something or the other (coqui frogs, stinging nettle caterpillars,
little
fire ants, whatever) while we still have to jump through all kinds of
hoops
to export produce, plants, seeds, etc. to wherever. I had a potential
customer at the market in Pahoa who would have loved to get some
Job's Tears but was sure that he would have gotten them confiscated
when entering Canada (a botanist, it had happened to him before).
Maren
(Varroa Mite)How's da bees? 
