Neighbors in La Mesa have reportedly finding dozens to hundreds of bees dead in their yards since September.
On a La Mesa neighborhood watch Facebook page, Kristin Dooley posted pictures wondering if the dead bees were only in her yard. She quickly got more than 80 comments, many of them confirming the same “not-so-busy bee” problem.
“I just put a little post out there, ‘Am I going crazy or is everybody noticing this?’ And everybody just dove on top of it,’” Dooley said. “It doesn’t seem to just be our problem, it seems to be affecting a lot of different people in a lot of different areas. I was in Spring Valley with a friend [Friday] and she said she has seen dead bees in her yard, too.”
Several NBC 7 viewers sent in video of dead bees recorded in Logan Heights and Sherman Heights.
San Diego County said it has not received any complaints or reports from neighbors cleaning up dozens, or hundreds in Dooley’s case, of dead bees.
“We find them dead on our patio, or slowly dying on our patio every morning. It just kind of builds and unfortunately, I had my husband clean up a lot of them just yesterday, so we don’t have as many right now,” Dooley said.
Bee removal experts and bee keeping experts, like AA Bee Removal senior technician of 28 years Sergio Luna, said Dooley’s problem could be that bees are attracted to light at night when it is cold outside.
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Dooley does have flood lights that she and her husband have seen the bees swarm around at times. Luna said the bees get lost and die before returning to their hives at night. He also said insect pesticides sprayed by neighbors could be killing the bees. He did state it was unusual to hear there were hundreds dying in one yard over the last few weeks.
Dooley talked to her surrounding neighbors and they said they had not sprayed pesticides in the last two months.
The county encourages people to report a consistent dead bee issues so they can monitor the area.
Dooley is mostly concerned about bees' lives, knowing nationwide there has been decline in five bumble bee species, according to Science Direct's report earlier this year. But San Diego County reports the county is not on a bee decline.
“My biggest concern is that we need the bees… and they should not be dying like this,” she said.
