Bee Keepers?

[Jim Meade / Iowa City]

Anyone keeping bees?  Lots of discussion over the past few years about decline in hives, but I saw something online that they are coming back a little bit.  Do you have your own pollinator plots?

[ncwinn54]

We set up a handful of hives, maybe fifteen years ago.  They were thrivng, but have since crashed. We never  used chemicals on any hayfields back then, but were right up against the neighbor's cotton and soybean rotation, which get lots of spraying.  

I see a few bees using the hives still, but none to harvest anything from, for sure.  

[bruce MN]

Hi Kay.

Even mildly suggesting what you say can start a bar fight in these parts.  Heck, maybe ieven in a church social hall 

[Kay/NC]

Bruce, this is why I practice Taekwondo...our hands and feet are our weapons. We take them everywhere we go.

[Jim Meade / Iowa City]

A new study by Purdue points the finger on honeybee toxins at household insecticides much more than at crop insecticides.

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/162207/20160601/bees-get-highest-concentration-of-pesticides-from-...

""Pesticides used in agricultural production, although important, were not the contaminants that posed the highest risks in honey bee-collected pollen," the researchers wrote in their study. - See more at: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/162207/20160601/bees-get-highest-concentration-of-pesticides-from-...