The buzz about bees
Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Algerina Perna
Rookie vegetable gardeners have been reading my tips in The Baltimore Sun for the last couple of weeks, and I am hearing from some that 2009 made for a disappointing start for this new endeavor.
There were blossoms, they write, but they never matured into fruit. And they wondered if it was because the bees were MIA.
The bee crisis is real, and it is frightening. The colonies are inexplicably "collapsing," and bees are disappearing. Since something like 80 percent of our food crop requires pollination, we are lost without bees.
Ken Point, who blogs from Central Pennsylvania, attended winter garden meetings in that state and reports on Veggie Gardening Tips that the focus was on pollinators.
Here's some of what he learned about bees.
- Bees are our most important pollinator but butterflies play an important role in maintaining genetic diversity because of the way that they flutter here and there spreading pollen to individual plants in scattered areas.
- There are native pollinators such as squash bees that will visit a single family of plants. Solitary squash bees pollinate and feed on pumpkin, gourds, and squash flowers and are much more efficient with them than honeybees.
- Bumblebees generate an electrical charge as they travel that attracts and causes pollen to jump onto them as they pass through flowers. Bees are hairy in comparison to wasps and that hair is an asset in the pollination process.
- Native plants are four times more attractive to native bees. Hybrid plants are even less attractive to native bees. Plant flowers in groups or drifts to attract native bees and plan for a succession of blooms throughout the season to provide for them. Native bees also need nesting areas, access to water, and sheltered sites to overwinter.
- Pussy Willow and Crocus are two plants that can produce pollen early in the season when native bees have limited supplies of good pollen sources.
Comments
We've also been killing bees in our gardens with the pesticides we use so freely. Some of the most commonly used ones are absolutely deadly to the bees if they contact it and should only be used in the most extreme cases of insect infestation. And they should be applied late in the evening when the bees are gone for the night.
Some flowers, such as squash blossoms, make overnight resting places for bees. If you must use an insecticide, be sure the squash blooms don't have bees in them before spraying.
Thanks for the advice, Sandy.--Susan
Posted by: Sandy | January 24, 2010 12:17 AM
I wonder if our obsession with the perfect lawn has had any impact on the bees?
Posted by: Reggie | January 24, 2010 10:16 AM
Honey bees are SO important, they are vital to the health of this planet.
Besides our food of which we are dependant upon honey bees pollintate cotton crops too.....whoops.....no more jeans even!
CCD is just the honey bees telling us they have had enough! They have had enough of us destroying their food sources and without them we could be destroyed too.
Lets all hope the honey bee does not become history and to stop that we all need to join hands and work together as a team........just like they do.
Posted by: Janette | January 24, 2010 10:21 AM
Reggie, I think that part of the problem is our all out war against clover and other broad leaf weeds in the yards. I visited a home a few years ago where the yard was a beautiful mix of fescue and clover and it was just alive with bees. Of course, the homeowners wanted to get rid of the clover. I sincerely hope I pursuaded them that their yard was beautiful and ecologically much better than their neighbor's perfect fescue lawns.
Posted by: Sandy | January 25, 2010 7:24 AM
I'm interested in trying to raise bees-after reading Novella Carpenter's new book Farm City.
http://www.blog.locoflo.com/2010/01/farm-city.html
Does anyone know the Baltimore City regulations on bee keeping?
Posted by: Ellen Frost | January 25, 2010 8:42 AM
People looking for detailed advice on providing flowers or nest sites for native bees will find lots of information on the Xerces Society's website, www.xerces.org. Check out the Pollinator Conservation Resource Center for regional guides.
Thanks Matthew!
Posted by: Matthew Shepherd | January 25, 2010 9:47 AM
Last season, I did see a lot more blossoms - on the tomatoes, most noticeably - than fruit. I can't remember the last time I used chemicals but there might be a circumstance where I'd use them. My next-door neighbor, on the other hand, seems to live by the. She has no garden beds or even plantings in the back yard and she uses chemical spray on (theoretically) her side of the fence instead of the weedwhacker. (My mums died very suddenly, this summer. I think some of the poison misunderstood the property line.)
I am guessing you are right....the wind can really carry that stuff. Susan
Posted by: Eve | January 25, 2010 12:30 PM