My pleasure. Now if we can just get neonicotinoids out of use all our bees will be much healthier.
Not a bee house info, but a bee info - if you are buying plants at a nursery, ask if they have been treated with insecticides, and if so, which insecticide. Neonicotinoids* are systemic - i.e. they are absorbed by the plant and go to all parts of it. This means neonics are also in nectar, and when the bees come to the flower and drink the nectar, they get poisoned. We see this in commercial beehives, because there are so many bees in a hive. We don't know how it is affecting native bees because they are small colonies (bumblebees) or solitary (every other bee) and we don't see the dead or weirdly behaving bees.
*Chemical structure based on nicotine - nicotine has physiological effects on us, but plants have it as an insecticide - if you have ever grown flowering tobacco in your flower garden you will have noticed how insect-free it is. Oddly enough, we seem to like plant insecticides, caffeine is also an insecticide, it keeps insects from eating the seeds of the coffee tree (we call them coffee beans).
