This great, and just up the street in Rocklin? Wow! Are the goats used for vegetation management? Or are these farm/production goats?
A friend of mine works for the Rocklin Public Works Dept. and she is a big fan of holistic management and because we have a large number of ranchers and other livestock owners in the area they decided to use goats and sheep to manage weeds and brush in the city of Rocklin and Lincoln. The public generally enjoys the livestock over noisy smelly weed eaters and herbicide. Kids love the animals! I even talked Sierra College into using animals to manage their wildlife area behind the school and along Secret Ravine (salmon habitat). I went through a 3-day multi-species grazing academy put on by the UC Cooperative Extension in 2009 and learn a lot about how useful these animals can be for brush/grass removal in urban settings. We use cattle, sheep, and goats to manage vegetation on our nature preserves as it is much more cost effective than mowing or herbicide and both the local economy and land benefits from this approach.
Don't those animals eat some of the natives, especially in the legume family, and don't they erode soil as they track around the area?
I like bees, flowers and honey as much as the next person, but here is my problem. I have bees, the fat furry ones (bumblebees?), living under my back deck just outside my back door. I cannot see exactly where, so I am unable to, er, evict them. As a result, there are always lots of bees swarming around outside my back door. I don't want them in the house and I don't want to get stung but I don't know how to get them to go away. I have stopped using my back door and now use the front door and go around. I've never been stung by a bee (or other stinging insect), but I'm sure I wouldn't like it. I have a strong aversion to sharp pains (such as a shot) and mosquitoes are bad enough as it is! It would drive me nuts to have one trapped in the house. I have been trying to pull the weeds from around the deck, thinking that maybe then I can get closer to see where their hidden lair is, and also some of the weeds were getting flowers, making the area more inviting to bees. I try to do it early in the morning before the bees are up. This morning I was not early enough because I weeded a little and there was one bee flying around. I watched it for a bit and then it charged me! I had to duck and dodge it quickly and my shoe fell off and flew across the driveway. If you had seen it, you would have probably laughed pretty hard. So, how can I evict them? If they were anywhere else, I'd just leave them alone and let them "bee."
Call a beekeeper in your area, explain your predicament, and perhaps they'll be able to relocate those pesky bees for you. If not, call your University Extension office for help.
I contacted the University Extension and they said that the bees cannot be relocated this time of year. They will die in a couple of months and not return, however, that seems like a long time to wait. The other option is "treatment" which will kill them now.
I do have a front door, so I suppose I could wait them out. They don't come out at night AFAK, so I can still use the back door after dark.
