# Finding dead bumblebees on Scabiosa flowers in garden



## Ango (Aug 9, 2015)

Please help! I have been finding several dead bumblebees on my pincushion (Scabiosa) every day for the past couple weeks. In fact...it seems that I can stand quietly and watch them land on a flower....and they seem to stay there and become paralyzed and still. They remain on the flower in this manner, until eventually dying. These are the only flowers in my garden that I have witnessed this behavior. These Scabosia were planted this Spring so are in their first season in my garden. I've been concerned about neonics, but the local mom and pop nursery where I bought these flowers as tiny starts assured me that they are safe. Also, everything that I have read about neonics seems to explain that the bees would not be affected quite in this manner, with such immediacy as soon as they land on the flower.

Is there something harmful about these pincushion flowers? Could it be neonics? Or, are the bees naturally dying and completing their life cycle at this time of the season and choosing these flowers to die on? It is only bumblebees that I am finding. The honeybees and other types of pollinators do not seem at all affected by the flowers in this way. I live in Michigan in zone 6a. I really try to plant flowers that are beneficial to the pollinators, and mostly have native varieties in my garden. These Scabosia are among the few non-native plants and I was trying to be careful when choosing them, so as to avoid neonics.

Please offer any help or advice. Thank you!


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Get rid of the plants and flowers, right now. Anything that kills the bees should not
be there in the first place. My pumpkin patch is full of bumble bees everyday.
They come and go as they please without dying on the open flowers though full of
pollen all over when they come out. Maybe next year you should plant them a pumpkin patch instead. 
But for now get rid of those poisonous flowers. Maybe the nursery did not know where their seedlings come from. 
Probably from a source that use the poison. And they don't even know about it.


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