Anecdotally, I would love to hear what everyone's personal experiences are with seeing bees. I left the US in 2012, and honeybees were a common sight then. I'm curious to know if people in the US...
Anecdotally, I would love to hear what everyone's personal experiences are with seeing bees. I left the US in 2012, and honeybees were a common sight then.
I'm curious to know if people in the US — or other countries where honeybees are dwindling — are still see a honeybees in their day-to-day life (which would suggest that feral bees are still hanging on, even if commercially owned bees are struggling)?
I haven't seen a honeybee since I was a kid. I planted a lot of flowers last year and had tons of bumblebees, sweat bees, mason bees, and a lot of sneaky little yellow and black bees I couldn't...
I haven't seen a honeybee since I was a kid. I planted a lot of flowers last year and had tons of bumblebees, sweat bees, mason bees, and a lot of sneaky little yellow and black bees I couldn't identify.
I encourage others to do the same! Plant native plants in your yard, or in a pot on a balcony. They seem to adore sunflowers, there was a constant cloud of pollinators around my sunflower patch until the cold finally killed the flowers off. Also, leave dead flower stalks and hold off mowing the lawn until as late in the spring as you can, this protects bee eggs in flower stalks and those on and under the ground. Information on attracting solitary bees.
I live in Australia, where a lot of native plant species require buzz pollination to reproduce, but there is exactly one pollinator in my region that can do it: the blue-banded bee (which hammers...
I live in Australia, where a lot of native plant species require buzz pollination to reproduce, but there is exactly one pollinator in my region that can do it: the blue-banded bee (which hammers flowers with its head to perform buzz pollination). This makes the blue-banded bee a keystone species. Unlike seemingly every other country in the world right now, introduced honeybees are doing extremely well in Australia, and feral hives of honeybees are unfortunately out-competing blue-banded bees.
So I've been trying to grow more flowers specifically for my lovely blue-bandeds. They like purple flowers in particular, and I have had a lot of success attracting them by growing purple-flowered natives (like dianella and westringia), but also well-behaved exotics (like lavender and verbena) to ensure that I have purple flowers throughout the whole growing season. With so many honeybees around, the blue-bandeds need all the help they can get to not starve.
Honeybees are not particular about flower color, but they are especially drawn to white flowers, so I try to minimize white flowers in my garden — and when I do grow white flowers (a lot of fruits and vegetables have white flowers), I try to grow them at a distance from the purple flowers (but within line of sight) to lure the honeybees away and give the blue-banded bees some breathing room.
A little trick I have found when shopping at nurseries, which should work for anyone (not just blue-banded bee fans): Spend some time just quietly observing the flowers, and then buy the ones that your target pollinator keeps visiting over and over again. Even within a given plant species, different varieties do not all provide the same quantity or quality of nectar/pollen, so this is a really easy way to search out the best ones. If you do this on a regular basis throughout the growing season, you can make sure that your pollinators always have something good to eat.
I see fewer insects in general than I did years ago. But I've seen a lot of "wild" bees lately when hiking in the US. One insect that I hardly see anymore is "Junebugs", which are little brown...
I see fewer insects in general than I did years ago. But I've seen a lot of "wild" bees lately when hiking in the US.
One insect that I hardly see anymore is "Junebugs", which are little brown beetles that appear in the late spring/early summer. There used to be thousands of them at night, clumsily bouncing around any kind of light. I only see one or two a year now. It definitely doesn't seem like a good thing.
Aw, really? One of my last memories before leaving the US was having a late-night video chat with my Australian boyfriend (he's the reason I emigrated from the US) and showing him the countless...
Aw, really? One of my last memories before leaving the US was having a late-night video chat with my Australian boyfriend (he's the reason I emigrated from the US) and showing him the countless Junebugs crawling on my window trying to reach the light inside. It's upsetting to think that that's now uncommon.
I live in the rural high desert southwest. I believe that honeybees here aren't native, but there are a lot of commercial honeybees around here still. We also have a wide variety of native bees--I...
I live in the rural high desert southwest. I believe that honeybees here aren't native, but there are a lot of commercial honeybees around here still. We also have a wide variety of native bees--I think in part they like my yard because we have a lot of native plants (so does my next door neighbor who farms organically.)
One thing I have noticed is that bees are more likely to swamp my hummingbird feeders and the water in my birdbaths--I think in part because there has been a drought here for a while. Another thing I have noticed is that the native bumblebees are getting more aggressive and territorial. No idea what that means.
Other than that, I worry about the lack of butterflies and especially moths. Thirty years ago they were everywhere all summer. Last year I saw maybe a dozen butterfies, despite having an inviting yard. Moths are harder to count but definitely going out at night they are harder to find. I worry about the birds and lizards, and even other insects like praying mantids that depend on the moths and butterflies for food.
Honeybees are thirsty creatures! When I worked on a farm that used honeybees to pollinate greenhouse crops, we draped burlap fabric in buckets of water for them to drink (the burlap gave them a...
Honeybees are thirsty creatures! When I worked on a farm that used honeybees to pollinate greenhouse crops, we draped burlap fabric in buckets of water for them to drink (the burlap gave them a surface to crawl on so they didn't drown), and these watering stations were a real hive of activity. We had to add more water so frequently that we ended up rigging the irrigation system to the buckets.
While hiking in a remote area of Joshua Tree last week I came upon a swarm of what looked like honey bees collecting pollen from trees. I think that's the only time I've come across that many bees...
While hiking in a remote area of Joshua Tree last week I came upon a swarm of what looked like honey bees collecting pollen from trees. I think that's the only time I've come across that many bees before. The sound had me in awe.
Anecdotally, I would love to hear what everyone's personal experiences are with seeing bees. I left the US in 2012, and honeybees were a common sight then.
I'm curious to know if people in the US — or other countries where honeybees are dwindling — are still see a honeybees in their day-to-day life (which would suggest that feral bees are still hanging on, even if commercially owned bees are struggling)?
I haven't seen a honeybee since I was a kid. I planted a lot of flowers last year and had tons of bumblebees, sweat bees, mason bees, and a lot of sneaky little yellow and black bees I couldn't identify.
I encourage others to do the same! Plant native plants in your yard, or in a pot on a balcony. They seem to adore sunflowers, there was a constant cloud of pollinators around my sunflower patch until the cold finally killed the flowers off. Also, leave dead flower stalks and hold off mowing the lawn until as late in the spring as you can, this protects bee eggs in flower stalks and those on and under the ground. Information on attracting solitary bees.
The honeybee situation is serious, so is the state of the rest of the bees. Native pollinators are important, they handle a lot of our pollination. There are native flowers where I live that can only be pollinated by native bees adapted to buzz pollination.
I live in Australia, where a lot of native plant species require buzz pollination to reproduce, but there is exactly one pollinator in my region that can do it: the blue-banded bee (which hammers flowers with its head to perform buzz pollination). This makes the blue-banded bee a keystone species. Unlike seemingly every other country in the world right now, introduced honeybees are doing extremely well in Australia, and feral hives of honeybees are unfortunately out-competing blue-banded bees.
So I've been trying to grow more flowers specifically for my lovely blue-bandeds. They like purple flowers in particular, and I have had a lot of success attracting them by growing purple-flowered natives (like dianella and westringia), but also well-behaved exotics (like lavender and verbena) to ensure that I have purple flowers throughout the whole growing season. With so many honeybees around, the blue-bandeds need all the help they can get to not starve.
Honeybees are not particular about flower color, but they are especially drawn to white flowers, so I try to minimize white flowers in my garden — and when I do grow white flowers (a lot of fruits and vegetables have white flowers), I try to grow them at a distance from the purple flowers (but within line of sight) to lure the honeybees away and give the blue-banded bees some breathing room.
A little trick I have found when shopping at nurseries, which should work for anyone (not just blue-banded bee fans): Spend some time just quietly observing the flowers, and then buy the ones that your target pollinator keeps visiting over and over again. Even within a given plant species, different varieties do not all provide the same quantity or quality of nectar/pollen, so this is a really easy way to search out the best ones. If you do this on a regular basis throughout the growing season, you can make sure that your pollinators always have something good to eat.
I see fewer insects in general than I did years ago. But I've seen a lot of "wild" bees lately when hiking in the US.
One insect that I hardly see anymore is "Junebugs", which are little brown beetles that appear in the late spring/early summer. There used to be thousands of them at night, clumsily bouncing around any kind of light. I only see one or two a year now. It definitely doesn't seem like a good thing.
Aw, really? One of my last memories before leaving the US was having a late-night video chat with my Australian boyfriend (he's the reason I emigrated from the US) and showing him the countless Junebugs crawling on my window trying to reach the light inside. It's upsetting to think that that's now uncommon.
I live in the rural high desert southwest. I believe that honeybees here aren't native, but there are a lot of commercial honeybees around here still. We also have a wide variety of native bees--I think in part they like my yard because we have a lot of native plants (so does my next door neighbor who farms organically.)
One thing I have noticed is that bees are more likely to swamp my hummingbird feeders and the water in my birdbaths--I think in part because there has been a drought here for a while. Another thing I have noticed is that the native bumblebees are getting more aggressive and territorial. No idea what that means.
Other than that, I worry about the lack of butterflies and especially moths. Thirty years ago they were everywhere all summer. Last year I saw maybe a dozen butterfies, despite having an inviting yard. Moths are harder to count but definitely going out at night they are harder to find. I worry about the birds and lizards, and even other insects like praying mantids that depend on the moths and butterflies for food.
Honeybees are thirsty creatures! When I worked on a farm that used honeybees to pollinate greenhouse crops, we draped burlap fabric in buckets of water for them to drink (the burlap gave them a surface to crawl on so they didn't drown), and these watering stations were a real hive of activity. We had to add more water so frequently that we ended up rigging the irrigation system to the buckets.
While hiking in a remote area of Joshua Tree last week I came upon a swarm of what looked like honey bees collecting pollen from trees. I think that's the only time I've come across that many bees before. The sound had me in awe.