Where are the bees?

On my property in rural Maine I have several fruit bearing trees and bushes including apple, cherry, crabapple, and 4 highbush blueberry bushes.  The disturbing thing that happened this year is not one of those trees bore fruit this year!  Not a single blueberry, apple or cherry!  My blueberry bushes normally produce a huge crop, sufficient for me to produce 30 or more jars of blueberry jam that my friends and neighbors really enjoy.  Not this year!  I haven't noticed any bees in my gardens this year, just a few bumblebees and the occasional hummingbird that also serve as pollinators.

Not many Americans know that honeybees are not native to the United States.  European honeybees were brought over centuries ago and they are the primary pollinators of our food crops now.  However mason bees are native to the United States, these are solitary bees that are up to 100 times more effective pollinators.  They are small, benign, will and really hard workers.  

I did a blog post about mason bees a while back and have encouraged them on my property by building special mason bee houses for them.  Sadly, they have not been using the house that I installed this year.

mason bee house

I would encourage you to purchase or build a mason be house if you have a rural property and/or a large garden or fruit trees.  If you're not part of the solution then your part of the problem!

This is deeply disturbing and I've talked to a number of neighbors here in rural Maine who say the same thing has happened to them.  Without bees we have no food.  Bees pollinate about 70% of all the foods that we eat!  Farmers rent honeybee hives to pollinate their crops, but due to honeybee colony collapse they are less available for these important jobs.  The collapse is mostly attributed to pesticides and the broad misuse of them in agriculture.  

if you were alive in the 60s and 70s you may remember going on family vacations and having to wipe all the dead bugs off the front of the car and windshield.  These days I hardly ever see dead bugs on my vehicle.  This is also deeply concerning since insects are at the bottom of the food chain for the whole planet.

As the climate crisis accelerates faster than climatologists can calculate - we are seeing sweeping changes in the ecology of the planet.  Some experts are predicting that in the foreseeable future food shortages and the climate crisis will be driving mass migrations of refugees.  This already happened in Syria in 2006-9 when farming collapsed due to prolonged drought and Syrian refugees moved up into Europe.  The problem is we don't have another planet to go to so we have to figure this out somehow.

So what can we do?

• stop using pesticides, particularly on large lawns and gardens
• install mason bee houses 
• support organic agriculture that do not use pesticides

Free firewood from the roadside!

We get major snow storms in the winter here in Maine that bring trees down a lot.  The local road crews cut up downed trees that fall on the roads and leave them there in 4ft lengths for people to pick up for firewood.  This last winter (2025-6) was brutal and we had several major storms of heavy wet snow that dropped a lot of trees (with the commensurate power outages).  It was also unusually cold and I use more firewood than anticipated.  I usually purchase 2 cords at $350 per cord for green wood - seasoned is more expensive. 

This year I nearly ran out of firewood.  Luckily I was able to cut down some standing dead trees for friends in late February that really helped.  Now it's April and the beginning of "mud season" and a good time for me to go get some of the free firewood on the road sides.

I don't own a gas chainsaw - just a cordless one and a corded electric one that I can power from my EcoFlow Delta 2 battery generator.  I load the wood into my Chevy Bolt EV - or use my trailer to haul it home.

Once I get home I can cut and split everything to 16" firewood lengths.  This recent batch (in back) was poplar that is easy to split by hand with my 8lb splitting maul.  But the big logs in the foreground that I picked up using my trailer are heavy maple, so I'll be renting a gas powered splitter to break that lot down.  It should all be seasoned after 6-9 months and ready to heat my workshop and home.  I'm guessing that I have over a half cord - saving me over $170 and it's all great exercise!
 

Adding 2 440W bifacial panels to my ground mounted array

 Today I drove down to Greentech to pick up 2 440W bifacial solar panels made by SEG Solar in Texas.  I have made an effort to use almost exclusively US mad panels.  I used my trailer to pick them up and they fork lifted them on with a pallet that I was later able to cut up for firewood to heat my workshop. This winter was unusually cold and I almost ran out of firewood so this is a nice freebie!

The panels cost me a total of $417.78 (.45/Watt before taxes), then I stopped by my local metal supplier and spent about $80 on aluminum angle for the mounts.  I will be staking down the bottom rail of the mounts with big tent pegs.  Last fall we had a wind storm that blew them all down - face down.  No panels were damaged other than some minor dents in the frames, but I don't want that to happen again!

New panels on far left

new panels on far right

I now have a total of 46 solar panels on my property! The 4 new 440W panels are wired in series/parallel to yield 60V at about 26Amps which works best with the 2kW inverter I used for these 4 panels.  I used about 20ft of 6 gauge wire from the array to the inverter in the basement.  The bifacial panels are 22.53% efficient which is really good and the back side can contribute up to 15% from reflected snow.

 inverters

I now have this array split between 2 inverters.  The original 1kW unit was maxed out with the original 6 panels, so I added a 2kW inverter (shown on left below).  So the 4 big panels (about 1760W) are on that one with a 20ft. run of 4 gauge wire, and the 4 small 195W panels are on the smaller 1kW inverter.   

The 2kW unit puts out 240V which is wired right into the breaker box on the left.  The smaller 1kW unit has a power cord that simply plugs into an outlet on the wall below.  Mounted above them are circuit breakers that serve as disconnects for servicing the arrays.

Wiring diagram for my ground mounted array
 

My goal is to move toward zero electric bills in the winter.  With 2 heat pumps working hard in the Maine winters, and my Chevy Bolt EV also using more power in the winter, my bills are running over $250/month in January and February!