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<blockquote data-quote="Piedpiper" data-source="post: 12326" data-attributes="member: 722"><p>Hi,</p><p></p><p>Thank you all for your responses. I kept no photos sadly. I do wonder about the varroa, the ttreatment was in at the time and had been in since early February, they were also treated with a differnt miticide in the spring, but Varroa resistance I am informed is a real issue in my immediate area - so this could indeed have been a factor. Maybe the monthly sugar shake for all hives is now an essential routine. I suspect that there may be a mega-nest out there somwhere that if given the opportunity will over winter as they do up North, as I am told they do. I will go hunting for it, as they are clearly still breeding.</p><p></p><p>The sparrows attacked everything and worked to a system. However, they seemed to target incoming bees and seemed to be very partial to queens - I had a 100% failure rate with queen cells this year and eventually had to resort to mated queens. I suspect that the sparrow issue is related to the fact that when we bought this property Mosgiiel township was barely in sight, but now the housing estates are just accross the road. Many of these houses have bird feeders out all year - feeding seeds. This keeps the sparrows starlings and blackirds alive all year, whatever new numbers are produced each season - but in the breeding season the biblical plague of adult sparrows blackbirds and starlings that this largesse creates don't want seed - they want protein for their fledglings (sparrows can do three broods a year). Guess where this comes from? When they are not eating bees they are destroying everything else - apples, pears, blacklberries, plums, pumpkins, tomatoes - everything now gets pecked to peices long before it is ripe. They even defoliate the trees. We had no issues like this before.</p><p></p><p>It has been noted in the media that the bird feeding 'industry' produces products that are only of interest to a small number of exotic birds, and this boost to their numbers has major negative impacts upon insect populations, but usually these concerns are related to native insects. However, if bird feeder powered sparrows get the bee hunting habit everywhere, in the manner that they have here - then, believe me, we do have a major issue. </p><p></p><p>Rob</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Piedpiper, post: 12326, member: 722"] Hi, Thank you all for your responses. I kept no photos sadly. I do wonder about the varroa, the ttreatment was in at the time and had been in since early February, they were also treated with a differnt miticide in the spring, but Varroa resistance I am informed is a real issue in my immediate area - so this could indeed have been a factor. Maybe the monthly sugar shake for all hives is now an essential routine. I suspect that there may be a mega-nest out there somwhere that if given the opportunity will over winter as they do up North, as I am told they do. I will go hunting for it, as they are clearly still breeding. The sparrows attacked everything and worked to a system. However, they seemed to target incoming bees and seemed to be very partial to queens - I had a 100% failure rate with queen cells this year and eventually had to resort to mated queens. I suspect that the sparrow issue is related to the fact that when we bought this property Mosgiiel township was barely in sight, but now the housing estates are just accross the road. Many of these houses have bird feeders out all year - feeding seeds. This keeps the sparrows starlings and blackirds alive all year, whatever new numbers are produced each season - but in the breeding season the biblical plague of adult sparrows blackbirds and starlings that this largesse creates don't want seed - they want protein for their fledglings (sparrows can do three broods a year). Guess where this comes from? When they are not eating bees they are destroying everything else - apples, pears, blacklberries, plums, pumpkins, tomatoes - everything now gets pecked to peices long before it is ripe. They even defoliate the trees. We had no issues like this before. It has been noted in the media that the bird feeding 'industry' produces products that are only of interest to a small number of exotic birds, and this boost to their numbers has major negative impacts upon insect populations, but usually these concerns are related to native insects. However, if bird feeder powered sparrows get the bee hunting habit everywhere, in the manner that they have here - then, believe me, we do have a major issue. Rob [/QUOTE]
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