Spot the Pollinator: Honey Bees

With the hot summer weather many things in my garden are starting to bolt. One positive of my plants going to flower is seed saving. Another is all the bees that the flowers are attracting to my garden, and I need them to pollinate my summer squash, tomatoes and cucumbers. But on a purely happiness level, seeing the bees makes me smile.

I'm a little bit obsessed with bees, and when I see them I have to stop and take a photo of them. My kids and husband are getting a little bit tired of waiting for me to get the perfect shot, which sometimes is a challenge armed with just my iPhone.

I saw the bumble bee and honey bee when we were at Granville Island
this weekend. In fact, there were so many bees here that the air was buzzing. 

I managed to get a second good capture as the bumble bee flew away.

This honey bee was pollinating my cucumbers.

Cilantro bolts very quickly, but it is lovely when it flowers. They are
in the same bed as my zucchinis and bringing the bees like crazy. The
bee is difficult to see in the top middle of the photo. 

I am linking up with The Green Bean Chronicles who is hosting the Spot the Pollinator segment. Pop on over and visit her.







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Spot the Pollinator

Everyone is hearing about the importance of pollinators to the world's food systems in the media these days, and the threats to their existence. Most people think about honey bees when they hear pollinators, but there are many other insects who contribute to the pollination of flowers. Along with honey bees, there are hundreds of bees native to North America who carry out the important task of pollination. My lawn is full of digger bees and I am trying to help nurture some mason bees in my backyard. But other insects carry out the act of pollination as well, such as flies, butterflies, moths and beetles.

Are Wasps Pollinators?

One pollinator that most people are unhappy to see are wasps. Yes, they can be aggressive, particularly as the summer comes to an end, when they are grumpy and their food supplies begin to dwindle. Until I spent more time in gardens observing the insects that visit and populate the plants I didn't realize that wasps visit flowers. They may accidentally pollinate when they are hunting their prey in flowers, but it turns out they also drink nectar!

But Aren't Wasps The "Bad Guys"?

I have long been terrified of wasps. I was stung repeatedly, in fact dozens of times at once, when I was a young child and inadvertently disturbed a large wasp nest. As I have become more passionate about organic gardening, however, I have come to appreciate the wasp. The mere sight of them can cause people to scream and run away. But they are an important part of the ecosystem. They are carnivores who hunt for pest insects that may eat our plants. They are everywhere, and as the summer wears on their numbers increase, so if you can't beat them, join them, so to speak. I have even been able to get close enough to some to take their photos, something that I consider quite brave because of wasps' renowned aggression.

Of course I still get frustrated with wasps in the dog days of summer when they swarm around us as we eat our dinner outside. But I have a new appreciation of this much maligned insect.

Spot The Pollinator 

My spot the pollinator photo is a bald faced hornet, taken on my raspberries.

I am linking up with The Green Bean Chronicles who is hosting the Spot the Pollinator segment. Pop on over and visit her.

Pollinator Possibilities: Mason Bees

With all of the doom and gloom surrounding honey bees and the threat to our food system, I was surprised and delighted to learn about a North American native bee, mason bees.  There are dedicated people who help and nurture mason bees year after year. In fact, I learned about them this year during a biweekly gardening session with a local chef and gardening advocate at my school. I was inspired by what I learned to attempt to nurture mason bees in my own backyard this year.

So why mason bees? What is so special about them?

Mason bees are solitary, do not live in hives, and have no worker bees or queen bees.  As such they have a very unique life cycle. In March and April, when temperatures begin to warm up and the trees begin to flower, the males begin to emerge from their cocoons. They wait nearby until the females emerge, then mate and die. The females then spend the rest of their time collecting pollen and nectar, which they use to make little pollen beds for the eggs they lay. They will create their nests in narrow holes or tubes. Once they have laid an egg, they block the tube with mud (hence “mason” bees) and prepare another pollen bed for another egg, then create another mud wall. The first eggs laid in a hole or tube are female, and the eggs laid closer to the opening of the hole are male. Isn’t that amazing that they can choose whether to lay a male or female egg? When the female has laid all her eggs she too dies, at the end of spring or early summer.

Through the summer the eggs hatch into larvae, which eat the pollen and nectar beds. The larvae develop into pupae, which in turn spin a cocoon to develop into bees. Over the winter the bees hiberate inside their cocoons, waiting until the temperature warms up enough for them to emerge, thereby starting the whole cycle again.

The first thing that sold me on mason bees is that they do not sting.  In fact, you may have seen a mason bee without realizing it as they appear more like a fly than a bee. 

Mason bee cocoons: the two larger ones are female.

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Gardening Intentions for 2014

In the last week of December I received a 2014 seed catalogue from a local seed company, and when I saw it my heart skipped a beat. This meant that I can begin to think about my garden for 2014 in earnest. I can dream about what I will grow in my new garden. It may seem early to be thinking about the coming growing season, but many seeds can be started indoors in late February or early March, and last year I missed the window for some of the early varieties.

The new year naturally is a time to reflect on the year that was and look ahead to goals and plans for the coming year, but I don’t like to make specific and definite statements because I feel like a failure when I don’t follow through. Instead, I like to have intentions, which at least in my mind is different from resolutions.

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