But what I didn’t know was that by keeping bees I would only be helping one species of bee – the domesticated honeybee, which doesn’t really need saving – and possibly harming others.
...
If you want to help a variety of bees, the best way is to plant flowers that bloom sequentially from early spring to late autumn – even if you only have a window box or pots on a patio. Avoid gardening with chemicals, and leave areas undisturbed where solitary bees and bumblebees can nest. But don’t take up beekeeping
Honeybees are amazing and an important driver of our agriculture, and I'd hate to discourage someone from gaining an appreciation of insects by telling them not to have a hive at home. But it...
Honeybees are amazing and an important driver of our agriculture, and I'd hate to discourage someone from gaining an appreciation of insects by telling them not to have a hive at home. But it really is better to minimize the number of honeybee hives out there. We need to promote the native pollinators - not just for the sake of nature, but also we shouldn't put all of our bees in one hive, so to speak.
I'd argue having hives helps educate people about bees in general and can help all species. If someone has the opportunity to see how the beehives function, learn to care about them, and enjoy the...
I'd argue having hives helps educate people about bees in general and can help all species. If someone has the opportunity to see how the beehives function, learn to care about them, and enjoy the honey, they will be more likely to plant more native flowering plants that then help honeybees and native bees alike. If they were never exposed to bees, they may never have cared enough to take action, similar to how zoos expose people to wildlife and help them care about the environment.
As an anecdote, I have beehives. There are huge flowering bushes right outside the hives. The honeybees don't touch them, they're flying off in the opposite direction heading for some other nectar source. Instead, the bushes are covered with native bees, as are the dandelions and other wildflowers growing throughout the property. I don't think it's a binary of "honeybees bad, native bees good", I think there's a lot of nuance as there is in everything. Having beehives isn't going to outcompete the native bees unless you either have 1) a shitton of hives/too many for the land to support or 2) you're in an area with barely any nectar sources to begin with. It's possible for both honeybees and native bees to coexist, the key is planting enough native food sources for all of them. Rather than scold beekeepers, encourage gardening.
That is certainly something you could argue, and there is good evidence that exposure to the natural world helps promote an appreciation for it. But, I don't think we necessarily need everybody to...
That is certainly something you could argue, and there is good evidence that exposure to the natural world helps promote an appreciation for it. But, I don't think we necessarily need everybody to have a hive at home to realize that. And to speak to one of your points - that's exactly why we should concentrate honeybees to apiaries, much like a zoo, where people can get that exposure without them introducing more ecological impacts. We don't want everyone having a hive.
And that's because there are ecological impacts, or at the very least, very good reason to be concerned about it. The big thing, when we start talking about honeybees compared to native pollinators, is that no other native pollinator reaches the level of individuals that a honeybee colony can. Honeybees colonies range in the 10s of thousands of individuals with the higher end being around 80,0000. Typically, the next most populous group are bumblebees, which max out at ~400 individuals. Not all of these individuals are foraging, but if we assume relative numbers of nurses and foragers we are talking about a 200 fold difference in the number of foragers able to collect from finite pollen sources. And there is limited pollen and nectar availability in the environment - this is a fact. We simply don't know about the saturation of pollinators in a given ecosystem. It seems like overall, that the Americas were doing just fine without honey bees for a long time, and now you have an invasive species that can outcompete native species by sheer scale.
It's great that you appreciate honey bees. They are amazing creatures, not just for their ability to make honey, but because they have amazing social structures. In fact, one of the mind blowing things about their communication, which I'm willing to bet you're aware of is, is the waggle dance. The waggle dance encodes information not just about the location of food sources but also the quality. And so in your anecdote, it might be that the honeybees avoid these nearby bushes because they don't provide high quality pollen for provisioning. It could be that they already depleted those bushes and communicated that to the hive. It could also be that they simply just don't prefer those bushes, and natives do. But the important thing is that we don't know which reason is the likely explanation.
Overall, I'm not trying to scold beekeepers. And I don't think that's the goal of many people involved in conservation. The issue is that, with the recent studies on global insect population decline, we are trying to ring the alarm bells nice and loud. Honey bees are doing fine - just like cattle, and chickens, and sheep, and many other domesticated species. I'm not worried about them, they have us to look after them after all. But just like how cattle have displaced many natural grazers, we're seeing the exact same thing with honey bees and native pollinators. I'm worried about all of the other species because we don't fully understand all of the ecological roles they play, especially because of their role as pollinators.
To be clear, I don't think you personally are trying to scold beekeepers. I don't disagree that not everyone should be a beekeeper and we don't need tons of hives out there. That being said, are...
To be clear, I don't think you personally are trying to scold beekeepers.
I don't disagree that not everyone should be a beekeeper and we don't need tons of hives out there. That being said, are there really too many out there in the first place? That's my main point: if your goal is to help native bees, is reducing the number of beekeepers the best way to do that, or are there other things people can do that would have a greater impact? It's possible I'm wrong and there's a beekeeping craze sweeping the world that I'm unaware of, but my hunch is that encouraging people to improve their local ecosystem would be more effective.
ETA: after re-reviewing the article, the author does make an argument (based on extrapolation/estimates, but not entirely unsupported) that there are too many beekeepers in and around London. It's possible this is a more localized issue.
I'm a beekeeper, so I recognize I'm a bit biased here, but I have a few issues with this article. It seems to me that the author's aim is to promote the welfare of native bees. I feel that this...
Exemplary
I'm a beekeeper, so I recognize I'm a bit biased here, but I have a few issues with this article.
It seems to me that the author's aim is to promote the welfare of native bees. I feel that this article does disservice to that goal by narrowly focusing on discouraging the activity of a small population of people (beekeepers and the beekeep-curious) rather than highlighting the systemic challenges facing native bees and steps everyone can take to help them. Even though their efforts benefit honeybees more directly than native bees and introduce competition, beekeepers are more likely to take actions that benefit native bees: planting native pollen sources, avoiding pesticides, hanging bee houses, etc.
If everyone was keeping bees, we'd have a better environment for native bees, but have too much competition from the honeybees. In that case, this article would be highly relevant. But really, there aren't an extreme number of beekeepers. Instead, I fear that many people will just read the headline and say "oh, I don't keep honeybees so I'm already helping the bees" rather than learning about how they could actually be proactive and help. Rather than too many honeybees, we likely have too few pollen sources, something anyone could help fix if they had the knowledge and willpower. I suspect our monoculture lawns in America are a bigger contributor to native bee decline here than hobbyist beekeepers. If we had more diverse green spaces, I don't think the presence of beehives would have as much of an impact on native populations.
Overall, I dislike this trend of articles that tell people to change hobbies or habits because they aren't perfectly environmentally friendly. It seems like it would be more productive to give examples of how to help provide habitat for native bees rather than discourage the practice of a niche hobby that arguably still helps native bees to some degree despite the added competition. Beekeeping isn't perfectly green, but there are ways to mitigate your impact on native populations and be mindful of the local ecosystem
I'm not really seeing how your disagreement with the article isn't actually addressed. They mention that to support native pollinators you should cultivate wildflowers in your area which will...
I'm not really seeing how your disagreement with the article isn't actually addressed. They mention that to support native pollinators you should cultivate wildflowers in your area which will flower seasonally, but they also mention the evidence that honey bees outcompete native pollinators - this is becoming more and more evident with the data we're collecting.
From my perspective, there's no clear indication that people keeping bees necessarily leads to a better environment for native bees. I don't doubt that many hobbyist bee keepers try to cultivate a yard rich in plant diversity, which is good in its own right for factors beyond pollinators, but honeybees do not and can not rely solely on the flowers in my immediate backyard. They will expand beyond that area as they quickly deplete the pollen and nectar stores of the nearby plants, and this will have cascading effects on other pollinators that do not have the scale to compete with honeybees.
Yes, they mention at the end that you should cultivate flowers. I just think writing an article about cultivating specific flowers and other steps to help as well as highlighting challenges native...
They mention that to support native pollinators you should cultivate wildflowers in your area which will flower seasonally, but they also mention the evidence that honey bees outcompete native pollinators - this is becoming more and more evident with the data we're collecting.
Yes, they mention at the end that you should cultivate flowers. I just think writing an article about cultivating specific flowers and other steps to help as well as highlighting challenges native bees face (including competition from honeybees!) would be a more effective article if your goal is to save native bees.
Separately, I have some issues with the claims in this article. Nutshell version -- This is a very explicit "correlation, therefore causation" logical error. Nowhere in the article do I see any...
Separately, I have some issues with the claims in this article.
Nutshell version --
In Munich, an increase in hives in the surrounding area reduced the number of wild bees recorded between May and July in the city’s botanical garden.
This is a very explicit "correlation, therefore causation" logical error. Nowhere in the article do I see any evidence supporting the idea that "more domestic honeybees are the cause of fewer wild bees".
There may be causation going on there. It is, of course, possible that honeybee populations are impacting wild bees, and there is some logic to the idea that "there are only so many flowers to go around" ... but it's also worth noting that domestic honeybees do not forage on all the same things that various wild bees do. In many cases, they're not even dependent on the same habitats and food sources. In most cases, there probably is some overlap, but it's not a simple, black-and-white "the honeybees are eating the wild bees' food" scenario.
I find it much more likely that the real culprit is the spread of humans, along with our pesticides and other chemicals. It's been reported a lot in recent years, that we seem to be in the middle of a global insect Apocalypse ... insect populations of all sorts, are plummeting all over the world. Honeybees aren't causing that.
There is more and more mounting evidence that honey bees are displacing native pollinators. Plants can only produce so much nectar and pollen within a given time frame. They are a limited resource...
There is more and more mounting evidence that honey bees are displacing native pollinators. Plants can only produce so much nectar and pollen within a given time frame. They are a limited resource in the environment - if one pollinator forages from a given flower, it cannot replenish the pollen or nectar stores immediately. And at a certain point it will simply stop doing so. Additionally, honeybee colonies number in the tens of thousands and can forage at scale for a single community, whereas the majority of bees are solitary or live in much smaller social groups, such that they can only forage a limited number of food sources relative to a single honeybee hive. So literally, the honeybees are eating the wild bees' food.
I do agree with you that the real culprit is humans, but in addition to pesticides, we also domesticated honeybees to help us pollinate at a massive scale. Our massive fruit agriculture is really only possible because of honeybees. So yes, honeybees aren't causing the global insect decline, but they certainly aren't helping to prevent it.
It also seems that many of these studies were based in cities. It's unclear where exactly they were conducted (inside the city or the surrounding area), so it's possible that the effects of adding...
It also seems that many of these studies were based in cities. It's unclear where exactly they were conducted (inside the city or the surrounding area), so it's possible that the effects of adding beehives are amplified in urban areas where pollen sources are already scarce.
Former hobbyist beekeeper here ... one more tip not mentioned in the article, and that does not get recommended enough (I think) in general. Put out clean water ... in containers that provide...
Former hobbyist beekeeper here ... one more tip not mentioned in the article, and that does not get recommended enough (I think) in general.
Put out clean water ... in containers that provide safe, dry "landing zones" so bees and other insects can walk up to the edge of the water and drink w/o risk of falling in.
That's good for birds, too, obviously, but it is also very helpful for bees, other insects, and probably all the creepy crawlies.
Standing water is a mosquito breeding ground and, depending on where in the world you live, may even come with heavy fines if discovered. Make sure the water is moving, changed and cleaned at...
Standing water is a mosquito breeding ground and, depending on where in the world you live, may even come with heavy fines if discovered. Make sure the water is moving, changed and cleaned at least daily or more, has mosquito-larvae eating fish, or has anti-mosquito chemicals added (though I don’t know how the different chemicals may interact with other insects, so do your research)
Agreed. Standing water also doesn't really qualify as "clean water" ... at least, not for long. I am thinking of small bubblers of the bird fountain variety, that either include design elements...
Agreed. Standing water also doesn't really qualify as "clean water" ... at least, not for long.
I am thinking of small bubblers of the bird fountain variety, that either include design elements allowing insects to reach the water safely, or adding half-submerged sticks or rocks that provide such access.
I learned about buzz pollination recently. Honeybees can't do it, many solitary bees can. I don't keep honeybees but am planning to put in a mason bee house this year and plant a variety of native...
I learned about buzz pollination recently. Honeybees can't do it, many solitary bees can.
I don't keep honeybees but am planning to put in a mason bee house this year and plant a variety of native flowers that should keep something in bloom until late fall, along with some non natives like borage and cosmos that all bees seem to love. Any local honeybees will no doubt enjoy some of them, but it does make sense that native plants and native bees will be a good combination.
Here's the one thing I wonder about: I get that planting flowers to attract bees is the better idea. And bees are excellent for the environment and pollination. That said, I have a MASSIVE fear of...
Here's the one thing I wonder about:
I get that planting flowers to attract bees is the better idea. And bees are excellent for the environment and pollination. That said, I have a MASSIVE fear of bees- I'm not actually allergic, but bee stings hurt like hell and I do my damnedest to avoid that sort of pain.
Now, honeybees and bumblebees aren't so bad- usually you leave them alone, they leave you alone. It's the OTHER ones I'm worried about. To stay with actual bees- would planting flowers also attract Africanized honeybees (aka Killer Bees)? They're one of the reasons why I've never wanted to live in the southern USA (I'm originally from New York, and still leave in a relatively northern area). But I also worry about yellow jackets, wasps, and hornets (I realize yellow jackets are technically in one of those groups), because those guys sting you if you even just look in their direction- a bit of hyperbole, but they are mean and WILL sting you multiple times. So if planting flowers for native bees means you're also going to get nature's assholes... No thank you.
Africanized bees are honeybees that are highly defensive of their territory. Unless you are near their hives or actively swatting at a forager, you should be fine. In fact, most bees/wasps are not...
Africanized bees are honeybees that are highly defensive of their territory. Unless you are near their hives or actively swatting at a forager, you should be fine. In fact, most bees/wasps are not looking to sting you, they just want to go about their business unless you're threatening them or their home. The native bees referred to in the article, especially solitary bees, are even less aggressive. Solitary bees have no nest to defend, so they would prefer to flee rather than fight. Even "scary" insects like wasps have a role to play by pollinating and eating pest insects.
Just to confirm what Axelia mentioned - most insects will not bother you as long as you don't bother them. In fact, the majority of bees and wasps will ignore if you aren't around their nest. Here...
Just to confirm what Axelia mentioned - most insects will not bother you as long as you don't bother them. In fact, the majority of bees and wasps will ignore if you aren't around their nest. Here is a video I took of a wasp, maybe a couple of inches away, harvesting some wood from a dowel rod in my backyard. The only reason they might sting you while out foraging is if you squish or strike them. Foragers really are largely docile. But certainly be careful approaching a nest.
That's probably what it amounts to- they build nests in very inconvenient (for humans) places, so my guess is you get too close to a hive without knowing it. I know I've done that a few times-...
That's probably what it amounts to- they build nests in very inconvenient (for humans) places, so my guess is you get too close to a hive without knowing it. I know I've done that a few times- finding out where the hive is the hard (and very painful) way.
For a short summary:
...
Honeybees are amazing and an important driver of our agriculture, and I'd hate to discourage someone from gaining an appreciation of insects by telling them not to have a hive at home. But it really is better to minimize the number of honeybee hives out there. We need to promote the native pollinators - not just for the sake of nature, but also we shouldn't put all of our bees in one hive, so to speak.
I'd argue having hives helps educate people about bees in general and can help all species. If someone has the opportunity to see how the beehives function, learn to care about them, and enjoy the honey, they will be more likely to plant more native flowering plants that then help honeybees and native bees alike. If they were never exposed to bees, they may never have cared enough to take action, similar to how zoos expose people to wildlife and help them care about the environment.
As an anecdote, I have beehives. There are huge flowering bushes right outside the hives. The honeybees don't touch them, they're flying off in the opposite direction heading for some other nectar source. Instead, the bushes are covered with native bees, as are the dandelions and other wildflowers growing throughout the property. I don't think it's a binary of "honeybees bad, native bees good", I think there's a lot of nuance as there is in everything. Having beehives isn't going to outcompete the native bees unless you either have 1) a shitton of hives/too many for the land to support or 2) you're in an area with barely any nectar sources to begin with. It's possible for both honeybees and native bees to coexist, the key is planting enough native food sources for all of them. Rather than scold beekeepers, encourage gardening.
That is certainly something you could argue, and there is good evidence that exposure to the natural world helps promote an appreciation for it. But, I don't think we necessarily need everybody to have a hive at home to realize that. And to speak to one of your points - that's exactly why we should concentrate honeybees to apiaries, much like a zoo, where people can get that exposure without them introducing more ecological impacts. We don't want everyone having a hive.
And that's because there are ecological impacts, or at the very least, very good reason to be concerned about it. The big thing, when we start talking about honeybees compared to native pollinators, is that no other native pollinator reaches the level of individuals that a honeybee colony can. Honeybees colonies range in the 10s of thousands of individuals with the higher end being around 80,0000. Typically, the next most populous group are bumblebees, which max out at ~400 individuals. Not all of these individuals are foraging, but if we assume relative numbers of nurses and foragers we are talking about a 200 fold difference in the number of foragers able to collect from finite pollen sources. And there is limited pollen and nectar availability in the environment - this is a fact. We simply don't know about the saturation of pollinators in a given ecosystem. It seems like overall, that the Americas were doing just fine without honey bees for a long time, and now you have an invasive species that can outcompete native species by sheer scale.
It's great that you appreciate honey bees. They are amazing creatures, not just for their ability to make honey, but because they have amazing social structures. In fact, one of the mind blowing things about their communication, which I'm willing to bet you're aware of is, is the waggle dance. The waggle dance encodes information not just about the location of food sources but also the quality. And so in your anecdote, it might be that the honeybees avoid these nearby bushes because they don't provide high quality pollen for provisioning. It could be that they already depleted those bushes and communicated that to the hive. It could also be that they simply just don't prefer those bushes, and natives do. But the important thing is that we don't know which reason is the likely explanation.
Overall, I'm not trying to scold beekeepers. And I don't think that's the goal of many people involved in conservation. The issue is that, with the recent studies on global insect population decline, we are trying to ring the alarm bells nice and loud. Honey bees are doing fine - just like cattle, and chickens, and sheep, and many other domesticated species. I'm not worried about them, they have us to look after them after all. But just like how cattle have displaced many natural grazers, we're seeing the exact same thing with honey bees and native pollinators. I'm worried about all of the other species because we don't fully understand all of the ecological roles they play, especially because of their role as pollinators.
To be clear, I don't think you personally are trying to scold beekeepers.
I don't disagree that not everyone should be a beekeeper and we don't need tons of hives out there. That being said, are there really too many out there in the first place? That's my main point: if your goal is to help native bees, is reducing the number of beekeepers the best way to do that, or are there other things people can do that would have a greater impact? It's possible I'm wrong and there's a beekeeping craze sweeping the world that I'm unaware of, but my hunch is that encouraging people to improve their local ecosystem would be more effective.
ETA: after re-reviewing the article, the author does make an argument (based on extrapolation/estimates, but not entirely unsupported) that there are too many beekeepers in and around London. It's possible this is a more localized issue.
I'm a beekeeper, so I recognize I'm a bit biased here, but I have a few issues with this article.
It seems to me that the author's aim is to promote the welfare of native bees. I feel that this article does disservice to that goal by narrowly focusing on discouraging the activity of a small population of people (beekeepers and the beekeep-curious) rather than highlighting the systemic challenges facing native bees and steps everyone can take to help them. Even though their efforts benefit honeybees more directly than native bees and introduce competition, beekeepers are more likely to take actions that benefit native bees: planting native pollen sources, avoiding pesticides, hanging bee houses, etc.
If everyone was keeping bees, we'd have a better environment for native bees, but have too much competition from the honeybees. In that case, this article would be highly relevant. But really, there aren't an extreme number of beekeepers. Instead, I fear that many people will just read the headline and say "oh, I don't keep honeybees so I'm already helping the bees" rather than learning about how they could actually be proactive and help. Rather than too many honeybees, we likely have too few pollen sources, something anyone could help fix if they had the knowledge and willpower. I suspect our monoculture lawns in America are a bigger contributor to native bee decline here than hobbyist beekeepers. If we had more diverse green spaces, I don't think the presence of beehives would have as much of an impact on native populations.
Overall, I dislike this trend of articles that tell people to change hobbies or habits because they aren't perfectly environmentally friendly. It seems like it would be more productive to give examples of how to help provide habitat for native bees rather than discourage the practice of a niche hobby that arguably still helps native bees to some degree despite the added competition. Beekeeping isn't perfectly green, but there are ways to mitigate your impact on native populations and be mindful of the local ecosystem
I'm not really seeing how your disagreement with the article isn't actually addressed. They mention that to support native pollinators you should cultivate wildflowers in your area which will flower seasonally, but they also mention the evidence that honey bees outcompete native pollinators - this is becoming more and more evident with the data we're collecting.
From my perspective, there's no clear indication that people keeping bees necessarily leads to a better environment for native bees. I don't doubt that many hobbyist bee keepers try to cultivate a yard rich in plant diversity, which is good in its own right for factors beyond pollinators, but honeybees do not and can not rely solely on the flowers in my immediate backyard. They will expand beyond that area as they quickly deplete the pollen and nectar stores of the nearby plants, and this will have cascading effects on other pollinators that do not have the scale to compete with honeybees.
Yes, they mention at the end that you should cultivate flowers. I just think writing an article about cultivating specific flowers and other steps to help as well as highlighting challenges native bees face (including competition from honeybees!) would be a more effective article if your goal is to save native bees.
Separately, I have some issues with the claims in this article.
Nutshell version --
This is a very explicit "correlation, therefore causation" logical error. Nowhere in the article do I see any evidence supporting the idea that "more domestic honeybees are the cause of fewer wild bees".
There may be causation going on there. It is, of course, possible that honeybee populations are impacting wild bees, and there is some logic to the idea that "there are only so many flowers to go around" ... but it's also worth noting that domestic honeybees do not forage on all the same things that various wild bees do. In many cases, they're not even dependent on the same habitats and food sources. In most cases, there probably is some overlap, but it's not a simple, black-and-white "the honeybees are eating the wild bees' food" scenario.
I find it much more likely that the real culprit is the spread of humans, along with our pesticides and other chemicals. It's been reported a lot in recent years, that we seem to be in the middle of a global insect Apocalypse ... insect populations of all sorts, are plummeting all over the world. Honeybees aren't causing that.
There is more and more mounting evidence that honey bees are displacing native pollinators. Plants can only produce so much nectar and pollen within a given time frame. They are a limited resource in the environment - if one pollinator forages from a given flower, it cannot replenish the pollen or nectar stores immediately. And at a certain point it will simply stop doing so. Additionally, honeybee colonies number in the tens of thousands and can forage at scale for a single community, whereas the majority of bees are solitary or live in much smaller social groups, such that they can only forage a limited number of food sources relative to a single honeybee hive. So literally, the honeybees are eating the wild bees' food.
I do agree with you that the real culprit is humans, but in addition to pesticides, we also domesticated honeybees to help us pollinate at a massive scale. Our massive fruit agriculture is really only possible because of honeybees. So yes, honeybees aren't causing the global insect decline, but they certainly aren't helping to prevent it.
It also seems that many of these studies were based in cities. It's unclear where exactly they were conducted (inside the city or the surrounding area), so it's possible that the effects of adding beehives are amplified in urban areas where pollen sources are already scarce.
Former hobbyist beekeeper here ... one more tip not mentioned in the article, and that does not get recommended enough (I think) in general.
Put out clean water ... in containers that provide safe, dry "landing zones" so bees and other insects can walk up to the edge of the water and drink w/o risk of falling in.
That's good for birds, too, obviously, but it is also very helpful for bees, other insects, and probably all the creepy crawlies.
Standing water is a mosquito breeding ground and, depending on where in the world you live, may even come with heavy fines if discovered. Make sure the water is moving, changed and cleaned at least daily or more, has mosquito-larvae eating fish, or has anti-mosquito chemicals added (though I don’t know how the different chemicals may interact with other insects, so do your research)
Agreed. Standing water also doesn't really qualify as "clean water" ... at least, not for long.
I am thinking of small bubblers of the bird fountain variety, that either include design elements allowing insects to reach the water safely, or adding half-submerged sticks or rocks that provide such access.
I learned about buzz pollination recently. Honeybees can't do it, many solitary bees can.
I don't keep honeybees but am planning to put in a mason bee house this year and plant a variety of native flowers that should keep something in bloom until late fall, along with some non natives like borage and cosmos that all bees seem to love. Any local honeybees will no doubt enjoy some of them, but it does make sense that native plants and native bees will be a good combination.
Here's the one thing I wonder about:
I get that planting flowers to attract bees is the better idea. And bees are excellent for the environment and pollination. That said, I have a MASSIVE fear of bees- I'm not actually allergic, but bee stings hurt like hell and I do my damnedest to avoid that sort of pain.
Now, honeybees and bumblebees aren't so bad- usually you leave them alone, they leave you alone. It's the OTHER ones I'm worried about. To stay with actual bees- would planting flowers also attract Africanized honeybees (aka Killer Bees)? They're one of the reasons why I've never wanted to live in the southern USA (I'm originally from New York, and still leave in a relatively northern area). But I also worry about yellow jackets, wasps, and hornets (I realize yellow jackets are technically in one of those groups), because those guys sting you if you even just look in their direction- a bit of hyperbole, but they are mean and WILL sting you multiple times. So if planting flowers for native bees means you're also going to get nature's assholes... No thank you.
Africanized bees are honeybees that are highly defensive of their territory. Unless you are near their hives or actively swatting at a forager, you should be fine. In fact, most bees/wasps are not looking to sting you, they just want to go about their business unless you're threatening them or their home. The native bees referred to in the article, especially solitary bees, are even less aggressive. Solitary bees have no nest to defend, so they would prefer to flee rather than fight. Even "scary" insects like wasps have a role to play by pollinating and eating pest insects.
Just to confirm what Axelia mentioned - most insects will not bother you as long as you don't bother them. In fact, the majority of bees and wasps will ignore if you aren't around their nest. Here is a video I took of a wasp, maybe a couple of inches away, harvesting some wood from a dowel rod in my backyard. The only reason they might sting you while out foraging is if you squish or strike them. Foragers really are largely docile. But certainly be careful approaching a nest.
That's probably what it amounts to- they build nests in very inconvenient (for humans) places, so my guess is you get too close to a hive without knowing it. I know I've done that a few times- finding out where the hive is the hard (and very painful) way.