I am no alarmist and hate the tree huggers, but we are still very very short of bees for this year. Last year we had very few honey bees, wrote that off to the drought. We did have large numbers of solitary bees. Short on both this year.
We run a planting seed business and treat seed with anti-fungal chemical. We do not use systemic insecticides of any type.
We had 2 late freezes. I never remember a freeze here after the 1st of May, but we had one. My 87 year old father said he had never seen a freeze after May 1.
This year possibly a late freeze.
BUT, Monsanto has a seed an processing operation 10 miles from me. They produce cotton seed, with is treated with systemic insecticide for bole worms. It is this class of insecticide.
Am I blaming them? Not sure yet. Holding judgement for later.
TF
We had a late frost as well. Not as severe as yours though IIRC. It got down to 35 in my yard and I lost a few tomato plants in the lower part of my garden to it.
The blueberries had already bloomed though. We had about 1/2 of those actually set. Lower than normal.
As I mentioned up thread. Hubby wants to get a hive and keep our own. Just so we keep them local to us. I wouldn’t even get honey from it if I could just be sure my stuff would get pollinated. Bees could keep the honey.
Playing squash pimp is a pain. Not to mention the gallons of strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries that I did NOT get this spring because of lack of pollination. I know my raspberries weren’t lost to frost as they didn’t bloom till 2w after our frost. They just didn’t have any pollinators on them.