Poisoned Bees!!!!! ????? We hope not 🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞

Note that, in these two dead bees, the proboscis (bee tongue) is out instead of being tucked out of sight. This is one sign of having been poisoned. In the last couple of days I have found only six dead bees from our two hives looking like this; I'm hopeful that only a few bees have fed in contaminated areas and that it remains a very small scale problem. And, I hope that, if it is indeed poisoning, it doesn't affect many of the honey and native bees in our community. I will update this post as things change.

• If your dead bees have their tongues sticking out, they probably died from pesticide poisoning. When bees are poisoned, their bodies are often found in piles. A large pile of bees, all of which have their tongues out, indicates that your bees have access to some sort of chemical or pesticide that is killing them.

I believe that there may be more dead bees inside one of the hives. There were several dead bees under the feeder jar when I added a new jar of feed this afternoon. I wasn't going to feed today but, in light of the possible poisoning and not yet knowing the extent of it, I will feed for additional support. We will get into the hive in a couple of days and might then have a better idea of what we are dealing with. 

Will keep tabs on the hives and my fingers crossed!