grzbear
The buzz on the street is that this will be a record year for bees.
Area bees are on the move and keeping bee removal firms busy.
"This is the worst year I've ever seen in my 40-year beekeeping career," said Tom Martin, president of AAA Africanized Bee Removal Specialists in Tucson.
The university-area home of David Yetman, a self-proclaimed "experienced desert rat" and the host of the PBS television show "The Desert Speaks," was invaded by bees this week.
It started with a handful of bees flying out of a tiny crack in the edge of his porch roof. By the next afternoon, swarming bees formed a cluster about the size of half a basketball, Yetman said.
A beekeeper came and smoked the bees, Yetman said. And the queen, which caused most of the bees to swarm around the house, was removed.
"Within 24 hours, we went from 10 bees hanging around a hole to a swarm of thousands," he said. "It caused us to use alternate access to our house, but it did act as a burglar deterrent."
The rest...
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/82997.php
It IS the most active season I have witnessed on my hikes into the desert... of course the blooms are incredible this year as well...
Colony collapse disorder seems to be concentrated on commercial populations of bees not wild and/or the ferel Africanized bees.
Life will find a way... if it is at all possible for it to do so.
grz-