I attended a plant sale over the weekend and in the process signed up for the master gardener program. I have been wanting to do this for a number of years, but always put it off. It probably won't start until fall. Now I have no excuses. While signing up I met the instructor and asked him if there were bee keepers who needed places to leave their hives.
He smiled indulgently and explained that most beekeepers will charge you to keep their hives on your property as it is a lot of work to maintain the hive. I mumbled something about just trying to keep the honey bees population strong.
He continued by saying that the honey bee is not indigenous to our area ( I think they were brought over from Europe) and they end up competing with a number of natural pollinators such as the solitary bees, the fly that looks like a bee and a number of pollinating wasps. There are about 4000 species of pollinators in the U.S. Clearly he saw honey bee colonies as an agricultural invader for woodlands. While they are important for agricultural crops, they are not important for gardens.
I had not thought about honey bees in this way, and now like many environmental causes/fads, I must re-think this.
We ended up buying the "solitary bee house" shown in the photo above, which probably was not needed unless I am detracting the carpenter bees from the wood in my house! And yes, an idiot can make this in 30 minutes. Is my face red!
Who knew? What IS that thing?
ReplyDeleteinteresting bee stuff - thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteabout the master gardener thing - we thought we would sign up for the program about 3 years ago until we met a few "master gardeners" in the seattle area who had less knowledge than we do about gardening. we had asked a few questions where a table of them were sitting, and the answers were so obviously incorrect that we stood there speechless staring at each other with knowing eyes! these women looked through books, talked to each other in a conference, made comments which displayed their total lack of knowledge, and had us scurrying away to a nursery where we knew the staff were knowledgeable and bright. it all left me wondering what was actually required for one to get the title, and i never inquired about the program again. hope you get a better education than these women apparently did.
more bee stuff: when we first moved here we had a few hundred bees in our banks of candytuft and lithodora every day. it was non-stop work. i was at first nervous that they would swarm me, but they always left me alone. each year after that i noticed fewer and fewer bees. in fact, i imagine the number went from about 300 that first year to 20-30 the 2nd and perhaps 30-40 the years following that. no one knew what had happened - we still don't. i have no idea what kind of bees they were.
Sky, I hope they don't make me dumber! We have not had many bees of any kind this spring, but we have had 15 days of rain the past 20 days and that may have something to do with it.
ReplyDeleteI'm out of my element here. All I know about bees is what I read in the newspapers.
ReplyDeleteWe had Killer Bees here a few years ago and they swarmed and took up residence in a neighbor's tree. It cost a small fortune to have them removed.
I just saw a segment on PBS about how North Carolinians get honey from the woods, an old tradition.
ReplyDeleteI'm still fantasizing chickens for eggs.