Happy Bees, Happy Yard ~ Guest Column

Native leaf-cutter bee on Butterfly Milkweed. Photo: Margaret Fisher

Gardening to attract as many bees as possible is more than a rewarding pastime. It’s a blend of purpose, beauty, and connection to something grand and greater than we are.

The growing season is marching by, but sufficient time remains to add a few new bee-favorite flowering plants and shrubs to your property. Bees are key to the environment. Their health reflects the state of the health and interconnectedness of the surrounding world. If the bees are happy, so are the habitats they occupy.

Bees are among the most efficient and effective pollinators in the insect kingdom. Pollinators ensure the reproduction of 80% of all flowering plants, a Herculean feat that bees accomplish … inadvertently. In the process of collecting nectar and pollen for their own use, bees become covered in the plant pollen, fertilizing plants as they move from bloom to bloom.

The plants that bees pollinate have played their part as well, evolving flowers that are custom-built to attract bees by accommodating their unique preferences, anatomy, and behavior. It is an ancient and productive partnership between two very different forms of life.

In more recent times we’ve come to appreciate the direct benefit bees provide to uncultivated ecosystems. In meadows, for example, bees cross-pollinate many different plants, which leads to genetic diversity and stronger, more resilient plant stocks.

Bees promote the diversity of plants that clean the air and water and reinvigorate the soil. Plants are the foundation of food chains that feed herbivores and, subsequently, carnivores. The native plants that grow and thrive in undisturbed natural settings fix carbon, release oxygen, and mitigate soil erosion. In short, the health of wild ecosystems is greatly enhanced by the activity and industry of bees.

The European honeybee, which arrived in North America in the 1600s, is well known and recognized in our region. However, the ecosystem depends on the 400+ species of native bees that were here to begin with. Eighty percent of them are generalists and will visit many different flowers. The rest are specialists that need access to specific native plants to survive.

Native bumblebees are a good example of generalists. They are adorable, hardworking, and fast. A bumblebee can pollinate 6 blueberry flowers in the time it takes a European honeybee to pollinate just one. They are also highly social insects that live together in colonies. The native Spring Beauty Bee, on the other hand, is a specialist that emerges in early spring and relies heavily on the Spring Beauty ephemeral flower to survive. They are small, solitary bees with a slender appearance, the females of which are often seen carrying large amounts of pink pollen collected from the Spring Beauties.

But whether they are large or small, generalists or specialists, social or solitary, all native bees are suffering. Habitat loss and fragmentation, pesticide use, and climate change are the primary causes. Their food sources and nesting sites are disappearing. Their numbers are declining, some drastically, others less so. Despite these complex threats, there is much we as individuals can do to protect them.  

1. Tuck some of the native flowers and shrubs that are known to support bees into blank spaces in your garden. After the heat of summer fades, add some spring ephemerals to help the early season native bees next year. Bees are highly unlikely to sting when gathering food, although a few species will when defending their nests.

2. Remove non-native invasives from your property. They greatly disrupt native ecosystems.

3. Plant and maintain a pollinator garden that is reserved exclusively for native plants. With some care and planning, it can mimic a mini meadow.

4. Add a source of water like a birdbath to your garden.

5. Don’t spray for mosquitoes. The mosquitoes tend to quickly reappear, but almost every other insect the mosquito fog reaches, including bees, will be annihilated.

6. Avoid the use of any pesticide.

7. Leave some bare ground in your garden or landscape as most native bees nest in the ground

8. Think about leaving dead stalks in place for a year or two. Some native bees overwinter or reproduce in those stalks and need time to grow and emerge.

Bees are small but mighty creatures who need our help as never before. Our own future is served when we help shelter, feed, and protect them. For more information about native bees and the plants that attract and support them, visit the “Gardening for Bees” page of the Plant NOVA Natives website, which, among other interesting information, offers suggestions for pairing specific plants with the bees that are known to visit their blooms.

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Guest writer Eileen Ellsworth is a Master Naturalist, student of biodiversity, birdwatcher and native plant gardener.