Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

Anybody noticed a lack of pollinators and uneven development on their raspberries ?

Yes but generally.

I normally see way more bees... Not sure what happened... I know there's a farmer about 500 m away with many honey bees. Maybe they died?

I'm seeing a lot of bumblebees and even a few honey bees. My next door neighbour had them last year, but they died over the winter. Maybe he got some more. His first batch were really small. The ones I am seeing a what I consider a "normal" honey bee size.

Well, it really doesn't look good here, normally I would see bumble bees all over the hosta flowers and I have actually seen more humming birds then bumble bees, not even wasps on the raspberries , nothing here changed and nothing in the neighbourhood either.
There were wild strawberry blooms all over as usual and no strawberries. Can't figure it out.

Sounds scary Ontario Chick! Perhaps somebody is spraying insecticide there?

Usually the white faced hornets do a good job in the raspberries and they are "fairly" placid.

labradors wrote: ↑

Mon Jul 08, 2024 7:40 pm

Sounds scary Ontario Chick! Perhaps somebody is spraying insecticide there?

That's the odd thing, we are on 10 acres and next door neighbours the same size never go outside to speak of , the hay field across the road hasn't been cut yet , not sure why, it's a bit late, I simply can't see any changes here.
No white face hornets either @Killerbunny couple of the giant European ones passing thru, but that's all.
On the other hand large group of deer, 2 does, 1 young buck and 3 Bambis are demolishing my gardens, starting to think it may be time to give up gardening altogether.

Ontario Chick, so sorry to hear about the deer demolishing your garden .

I've had a similar problem with rabbits and have refused to put up a chicken wire fence around part of the garden and scratch myself working around it. Instead, I've been stupid and planted things that were a bit larger in the hopes that they would leave stuff alone, but they didn't. I really need to fence my veggie garden, but it's large.....

You would think I have got it covered by now, but no, they ate half of my lettuce, I doubled the fence cover and they took it down and ate rest of it