Why are the bees dying? New Evidence..

So this past weekend I was at my family's summer place (located in NY near the PA border) with a couple of close friends we stayed up late and sat out on the front porch quite a bit. It was about 2:30 in the morning when I noticed a Honey Bee around the porch light. I thought it strange for a Honey Bee to be out that late so I went over to look at it. It wasn't buzzing around the light banging it's head like all the other insects that were around it, but instead it had landed on a rusted wing-nut that holds a glass globe around the lightbulb. I looked closer at it and it looked like it was trying to get pollen off of the rusted wing nut. It was rubbing it's hind legs all over it and did so for about 15 minutes, going from wing nut to wing nut (three total) It seemed very odd to me so I took some photos and a video of the incident which I can post once I get home from work.

Does anyone out there know why a bee would try and get pollen from rusted metal?

Was the bee actually collecting rusted metal for a reason?

What was the bee doing out so late?

Photo:



Video:

YouTube Link

[edit on 29-7-2008 by gopher mines]

Sorry those are one of our Masonic Bee's. Dont worry about him.. just go back to sleep.

But in actuality. I make my own honey and for the past 3 years I have noticed a but of a slow down in productions etc. even the flower fields i have were starting to shrank in size to a point where i had to manually pollinate them. HOWEVER. i am happy to say that I have had absolutely no issues this year.. in fact the bees were back in full force.. better than i have seen in nearly 10 years.

This sounds to me that something very serious has gone on with the programming of our bees instincts. Bees are generally not nocturnal, and to gather rust is strange indeed.

Could massive radio/satelite/wi-fi waves be to blame, is it also the cause as to why people have been off lately as well? Speculation has it that aquatic mammals who use sonar are beaching themselves in response to man's proliferation of sonar in the ocean.

My next bet is bats are going to decline.

Curious...

-ADHD

reply to post by ADHDsux4me

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The place is very secluded, no cell phone service, no big power lines, no nothing. At night there is so little light pollution that you can see vividly the band of our galaxy. We don't have a television or phone at the place, it's a place we visit to relax and get away from all that stuff.

My wife's good friend is a grad student studying Colony Collapse Disorder. It seems to be only affecting wild bees right now, and there doesn't seem to be any one cause. She is studying the possibility of mites invading the bees bodies. She speculates it also makes them cuckoo, so to speak.

I was able to add video and a picture last night when I got home from work, I posted this on a "bee" website forum and am waiting to hear back about anything interesting. I'll post more when I hear more.