Honeybees Champion Pollinators

Why do we care about honeybees anyway? Because bees in general are the most important pollinators in most ecosystems. In North America 4,000 species of native bees can be found, such as bumble bees, Mason bees and Sweat bees for instance. They are mostly solitary, living alone in the ground or in a burrow inside a twig.

Above, Mason Bee.

Sweat Bee

Bumble Bee

However, the honeybee is the recognized as the "Champion Pollinator". This insect is social, and now adapted to live in a contained man-made "house" which can be easily transported where needed.The honeybee has had a long relationship with people for a very long period of time and it may be one reason why we care so much. Along the way, we discovered that honeybees were beneficial insects, that they were helping our crop production. Honeybees pollination is critical to agriculture, adding more than $15 billion to the value of American crops every year. (U.S. Department of Agriculture). A single honeybee can prance up to 10 hours a day from flower to flower, collecting nectar and pollen to feed their off springs; in the meantime pollinating our plants!

What's more interesting ( at a smaller scale!) is that honeybees are beneficial for our own yard and gardens. The bees will help pollinate our flowers and plants. In return, those plants will produce seeds, and thus we won't have to purchase new plants every year. At the end of the season, we can just collect the seeds, placing them in labeled envelops that we will either plant or exchange with our neighbors next spring.

The "trick" to attract pollinators is to grow native plants (trees and flowers) from your own area in your garden. However all plants are not created equal...usually ornamentals are not a good source of food for honeybees (more on that later). A good idea would be to plant an herb garden along the native plants; they especially love the mint family (Lamiacea) and perennial sages. Or you could leave some semi-natural areas in your landscape. To help the pollinators even more, try not to cut down all the stalks from your perennials in the fall, they are nesting place for many. I am sure that if you follow those two simple ideas, you will enjoy seeing more butterflies, bees, and beneficial insects and in the process you will appreciate their work! There is a great website that I like to visit called the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation (www.xerces.org). Enjoy Spring!