Delayed reaction on Joe's bee post: > Ellis and others suspect that the increased trucking of hives may also cause > problems for bees. This concern is in part related to nutrition too; whereas > bees in Nebraska, for example, used to spend winters in Texas with excellent > forage, now they head for California. An abnormally dry season there means > fewer wildflowers and less nectar, which weakens the colonies. And of course we had a very dry winter in California. See also this article by the reliably excellent Russ Parsons in last week's LA Times: http://latimes.com/news/… He points out that this year's commercial almond harvest is forecast to be 20% larger than last year's. I notice few if any honey bees in my relatively urban environment, but we are equipped with plentiful pollinators from California's 1500 (mostly solitary) native bee species. Of course these aren't plentiful enough to handle commercial Prunus orchards. Californians who like bees will want to check out this site: http://nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens/