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How You Can Help the Bees (and other Pollinators)
This article is courtesy of, and copyrighted by, PBS Nature
How Can You Help The Bees
While
researchers probe deeper into understanding CCD, or colony collapse
disorder, and beekeepers work harder to improve bee health, ordinary
citizens can help the honeybee too.
Go Retro -- Become a Backyard Beekeeper
Over
the years, our diets have increased the demand for a constant stream of
all-season fruits and veggies. Such demand hasn't bypassed the bees.
It's turned bee pollination into a year-round service and beekeeping
into a commercial industry. Today, there are half as many beekeepers as
there were two decades ago, and the remaining beekeepers are mostly
large-scale pollination services with thousands of hives and millions
of bees. But there was a time when beekeeping was much more of a hobby
than a commercial industry. "Beekeeping is a graying hobby," says Jeff
Pettis of the Dept of Agriculture. Joining the ranks of backyard
beekeepers can not only infuse the dying hobby with life, it can
strengthen the bee gene pool by adding healthy local bees to the mix.
If
you're interested in becoming a backyard beekeeper, experts recommend
starting with a local beekeepers' association to learn about keeping
bees alive and healthy. It's important that bees are adapted to the
local climate, so you'll want to start with a local source for bees.
Aside from contributing to the bee population, just two hives can
pollinate an entire mid-sized residential garden. You might just find
yourself with a lifelong hobby. For most people, beekeeping grows into
a passion.
Get Closer to Nature
If
you decide to pass putting on a beekeeper's suit, merely keeping a
backyard bee garden is another good deed you can do for the honeybees.
With rapid urban development limiting their foraging habitat, backyard
gardens can offer a welcome supply of nectar and pollen for honeybees.
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The best action you can take to benefit honey bees is to not use pesticides
indiscriminately, especially not to use pesticides at mid-day when honey bees
are most likely to be out foraging for nectar.
In addition, you can plant and encourage the planting of good nectar sources
such as red clover, foxglove, bee balm, and joe-pye weed. For more information,
see www.nappc.org
Photo by Ginny Stibolt
By watching and recording the bees at sunflowers in your garden, you can help us understand the challenges that bees are facing.
- It takes less than 30 minutes 2 times a month.
- It's easy.
- Free Sunflower seeds for planting.
- No knowledge of bees required!
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Cultivating
plants that will attract bees is the most important task of a bee
gardener. Choose flowers that bloom successively over the spring,
summer, and fall seasons such as coreopsis, Russian sage, or germander
in order to provide pollen and nectar resources to the native bees of
all seasons. If you're not sure what to choose, you can always check
with a local garden center for their advice on "bee-friendly" florals.
To improve bee visitation, the garden should contain large patches of
like flowers planted in close proximity to one another. Diversity is a
key factor in keeping bee gardens buzzing. Researchers have found that
more bees will be drawn to gardens with ten or more species of
attractive plants.
As
you diversify your garden, keep part of it wild because bees prefer
that to a manicured space. Go for a "planted by nature" effect rather
than a perfectly pruned garden. Remember: bees don't discriminate
between weeds and cultivated flowers, so let those dandelions grow.
And
of course keep your bee garden free of pesticides -- a danger in any
garden. Some pesticides can kill the bee before it returns to the hive;
other pesticides get carried back and can harm the rest of the hive.
If,
after all of your hard work, you're still not seeing bees in your
garden, it's not a wasted effort. Growing a pesticide-free garden is
also good for you if you're growing fruits and vegetables. Robert
Mandela, President of the Backyard Beekeepers Association, says, "Even
if there isn't a hive of honeybees within a couple of miles of your
garden, gardening brings the grower closer to nature and closer to
realizing that what s/he grows is more nutritious and tasty than the
'factory-ized,' perfect, unblemished, and perhaps pesticide-covered"
produce.
Even
if you don't have a green thumb, buying pesticide-free foods at the
market also protects humans and bees from pesticide poisons.
Give the Bees a Voice
"Something
the average person can do," says Mandela, "is to write to their
senators and representatives in congress on the federal level and to do
the same on the state level to support funding of honeybee research.
This support has fallen off over the years."
The
news focus on CCD makes it an ideal time to put pressure on politicians
to reinstate laws that used to prevent importing bees into the country
and transporting them across state borders.
Large
or small, any effort you make to help bees or increase awareness is a
step towards healthy bees, healthy crops, and, consequently, healthy
humans.
© 1997-2007 The Educational Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved. Originally posted at: www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/...
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