Others gave good enough replies regarding honey bees, but if the more
generalized bee population has vanished from an area -- mason bees,
solitary bees, a couple thousand types of native bees -- it's almost
always due to a neighborhood's overuse of pesticides.

Though outcomes for mixed gardens are ALWAYS better with organic gardening
principles, dopes just won't beleive it, so inept gardeners frequently
feel they need the short-cut of chemical assistance, then wonder why their
couple of fruit trees set poor fruit.

Even if only two or three people on the block are pouring the chemical
swill all over everything, it pretty much wipes out the beneficial insect
population and keeps them away a lot longer than it would harmful insects.
And the tragedy is, many a neighborhood has only one organic gardener for
every fifty ecological devastators.

Further, alas, if you live near wheat or corn growers or the like, far too
many agricultural practices means the eradication of bees of all sorts.
Orchard and vine-crop farmers usually know to protect pollinating insects
as well as the crop; grain farmers are less concerned; and just about ever
field crop or urban-lot vegatable garden has at one point or another has
contributed to the eradication of wild bees.

Honey bees hunt a great distance and alas will find the toxic gardens. But
many wild bees have a very small range of "search" for flowers and even if
you end up being an island in a chemicalized dead sea, organic practices
can re-establish a few bee species if you plant flowers they love best,
attracting those species that will settle down and not go into the
toxified yards around you unless you run out of nearby flowers for them.
Planting for bees and butterflies without toxins inevitably leads to way
better gardens than anyone gets by shopping the chemical aisle of Lowes
all summer long.

-paghat the ratgirl
--
visit my temperate gardening website:
http://www.paghat.com
visit my film reviews website:
http://www.weirdwildrealm.com
--
visit my temperate gardening website:
http://www.paghat.com
visit my film reviews website:
http://www.weirdwildrealm.com