wesleyn wrote:
Hi, my name is Neil, I'm a product design student in Brighton. I'm
looking into possibly doing a home beehive design, and yourselves as
gardeners have probably encountered the odd bee or two. I have a quick
question for you then, are you;

a/ completely unafraid of bees.
b/ very frightened of them - you may even be a confirmed apiphobic
(fear of bees) or cnidophobic (fear of stings).
c/ somewhere in between:
c1/ you are able to keep calm and ignore them, but wont go too
close
c2/ you'll move away / go indoors until they're gone
c3/ you'll try to get rid of them using bug spray etc.

I try to avoid disturbing their nests. That can be painful. Other than
that I ignore them. I do spray in-ground nests of yellow jackets in our
lawn or flower beds since it is impossible to not disturb those nests.
I also spray nests of paper wasps in shrubs that I have to prune.

We have some yellow jackets that come into our house. They are totally
nonaggressive. They are attracted to light. When they bask in the sun
by sitting on a window pane, I crush them so I won't risk stepping on
them in my bare feet at night and get a foot pain.

Any replies will be of great value to me, thankyou for taking the time
to read and respond.

A 2000 Cornell University study concluded that the direct value of honey
bee pollination to U.S. agriculture is more than $14.6 billion.
Beekeeping is very commercial here. It is about fruit and vegetable
productions, not honey production. Migratory commercial beekeepers
raise humungous numbers of bees and move them to the crops.

For example the blueberries in Maine are pollinated by hives trucked in
from over a 1,000 miles away in South Carolina.
[http://www.answers.com/topic/bee-migration-9045-jpg]

A migratory commercial beekeeper in Washington State with over 13,000
hives transports his hives to California to pollinate almond fields.

There is a list of migratory commercial beekeepers at:

http://www.pollinator.com/Pollinatio...s/polbkprs.htm

This is one way for farmers to stay in business in areas with colony
collapse disorder. These commercial beekeepers protect their hives from
chemicals that cause CCD. No one is saying the bees are dying, the bees
just aren't finding their way back to their hive. No dead bees are
found.

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