As I've written in previous posts, honeybees are awesome--especially if you want to produce honey. This post, however, is all about pollination. And for that, I turn my attention to native bees. I've been preoccupied with the idea of giving native bees their due. They pollinate even more plants than honeybees...and are heartier, because they're natives. Honeybees hail from Europe.
Not only are the natives naturals when it comes to the pollination gig, but strengthening their habitat is incredibly easy--far simpler than setting up honeybee colonies. Unlike their cousins from "across the pond," indigenous bees live in more modest nests. In this bee culture, Mama Bees makes their own nests out of tunneled logs, niches in the ground--even hollow plant stems! Sadly, many nests are destroyed as humans move onto land that was previously unused. And people like their spaces neat and tidy, so unwittingly, they scoop up and toss all the unsightly debris of nature, taking many a bee nest with them.
But knowledge is power, right? The more we learn about our natives, like the Blue Orchard, Mason, Leaf-cutting and Bumble bees (and countless others), the better we can help them establish safe places to nest. In the coming months, I will be posting information about native bees and their habitats, including topics such as tunnel-nesting bee biology, setting up bee-friendly spaces, and creating, maintaining and replacing artificial nest sites. Additionally, I will be launching Project Pollinate!, in which I will explore these topics in a hands-on way, including: researching further, creating my own nests, and teaching others. The long-term goal will be to travel to schools, libraries, museums and parks to share all the native-bee information I've gathered, and help build new nests.
Join me in this effort! Please comment with any helpful hints, tips or tricks for establishing native bee habitats, and bee looking for my upcoming posts exploring this issue.
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