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Why do I feel like “Dear Abby?”

Message:

I love my neighbor….BUT I hate the honey bees that FLY all over our
farm/yard/pool/kids and play yard!! My little grandchildren are scared of
them. How can I deter the bees without insulting my nice neighbor??

Frustrated!

Dear Frustrated,

I know this is not the answer you were looking for, but I offer it anyway.

I was surprised to hear you have a farm yet resent your neighbor’s honey bees. Of course, I know not what kind of farm it is, but I expect rural dwellers to have a greater understanding of the complexities and interrelationships of the natural world than those who live elsewhere.

But today, even the urban dwellers are more welcoming of honey bees than ever before. Residents of cities, counties, and other municipalities throughout North American and many other parts of the world are awakening to the fact that populations of natural pollinators are declining at an alarming and unprecedented rate, and we humans are ever more dependent on the ones we have left, especially the honey bee.

Yes, they can be annoying at times. And yes, their flight paths change with the seasons, depending on what is in bloom. But let me ask you some questions.

Do you eat colorful fruits and vegetables such as apples, cherries, avocados, blueberries, or mangoes? Thank a honey bee. Do you enjoy nuts such as almonds, cashews, or macadamias? Thank a honey bee. If you like to cook with canola oil or season your food with thyme, rosemary, basil, or sage, thank a honey bee. Do you ever plant seeds in your garden? Seeds such as carrot, kale, dill, or sunflowers? You guessed it. They all depend on honey bees.

Do your grandchildren wear cotton underwear or use cotton towels in the bath? Do they carve a jack-o-lantern in the fall, or enjoy a pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving? Again, thank a honey bee.

By the way, do they drink milk? Eat cheese, yogurt, sour cream, or ice cream? Don’t forget that bees pollinated the flower that made the seed that the farmer planted to raise the plant that fed the dairy cow.

But why stop there? A long, long time ago the bees pollinated many of the plants that fell to earth and became compressed by mudslides and water and all kinds of natural circumstances. Heat and pressure turned them into oil deposits which we pumped from the ground and formed into plastic to make milk jugs and toys, cribs and car seats.

In spite of all that, I agree no one should have to live in fear, especially not children, so this is what I recommend. You say you like your neighbor, the beekeeper. Good. Go knock on her door and explain that your grandkids fear the bees.

Ask her if she will show them the inside of a hive. Ask her if they can stick their fingers into a comb of honey warm from the sun and the bodies of thousands of bees. Tell her you want them to lick from their fingers one of the premier wonders of the natural world.

Ask her to catch a drone—they can’t sting—and let him walk about within their cupped hands. Let them count the six legs, five eyes, and two pairs of wings.

Ask if you can buy a comb or jar of honey to take back to your home and savor. Not only will the kids lose their fear, but they will remember the day for the rest of their lives. They will always understand the connection between bees and the foods we eat, and they will think you are the best grandparent in the universe . . . and they will be right.

And maybe, somewhere along this journey, you too will lose your fear—a fear that I suspect is the real problem here.

Best wishes,
Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Just hanging out

Once I began stalking honey bees with a camera, I became more and more enamored of insects in general. First I shot only honey bees, then I added other bees, and then other pollinators. Now I photograph anything even remotely connected with the outdoors. It becomes an obsession.

And I’m not the only one. A number of readers have sent me photos of things they have seen in and around their bee yards. Now that winter is coming and our honey bees are preparing to hole up for many months, it seems like a good time to start sharing some of these images.

Yesterday, Nan of Shady Grove Farm in Kentucky sent along this photo of a monarch caterpillar hanging from a chicory plant that she had left unmowed for her honey bees. She writes:

My garden draws monarchs because of the honeyvine milkweed, which a local entomologist told me is the most popular of the Asclepiadoideae [milkweed sub-family] for laying their eggs on. If caterpillars turn up while I’m weeding, I move them carefully to the fallow plot (where there’s always lots of honeyvine) hoping they will finish growing and pupate undisturbed. But the little creeps go stomping off to the bean rows, the chile plot, or the tomato trellises and hang themselves up in the worst possible places for getting picked, brushed against at a critical moment, or pulled up with spent vines. Either the pupa is blasted and quits developing, or even sadder, the butterfly emerges malformed and can’t fly.

Happily I had left this plot of chicory unmowed for the bees and it’s almost spent, but here is a monarch just starting to pupate. If you enlarge it you can see the silken cremaster along the horizontal stem. I will try to get some more images as the pupa develops and maybe catch it emerging. (You see, my entomologist friend has me conditioned not to say “hatching!”

Like honey bees, butterflies go through complete metamorphosis: egg, larva (caterpillar), pupa (chrysalis), and adult. The cremaster mentioned above is a hook that a pupa uses to anchor itself to a twig or other object. Before pupation, the larva spins a silken pad onto the twig where the pupa will anchor the cremaster once it appears. The chrysalis then hangs by the hook until the adult butterfly emerges.

Monarch butterfly caterpillar hanging in a chicory plant and preparing to pupate.
Monarch butterfly caterpillar hanging in a chicory plant and preparing to pupate.

Alkali bees face death by highway

The Touchet Valley in eastern Washington is home to the largest population of managed alkali bees anywhere on earth. If you have never met an alkali bee, Nomia melanderi, they are solitary, ground-dwelling bees in the family Halictidae. Native to North America and smaller than a honey bee, they have bands of blue, green, or orange across their abdomens. They like to live in dense communities, digging their homes in stretches of salty earth that is virtually free of foliage and roots.

According to Bees of the World (O’Toole & Raw 2004) alkali bees naturally build about 500 nests per square meter. But when farmers tend the soil and maintain just the right combination of texture and moisture, the bees can be coaxed into building 2000-3000 nests per square meter.

That is exactly what farmers have done for years in the Touchet Valley. Alfalfa growers in the area manage over 120 acres of alkali bees that pollinate nearly 12,000 acres of alfalfa. The alkali bees boost alfalfa seed production by as much as 70 percent.

But all that is about to change because the Washington State Department of Transportation plans to move and widen the part of Highway 12 that borders the nesting area. Not only will the road width be expanded into a four-lane divided format, but the relocation will put the road right through the bees’ flight path.

A four-year study now underway shows that the bees fly just one to three feet off the ground, so mass slaughter is in store unless an alternative can be found. Researches from Washington State University erected mesh fences to see if they could get the bees to fly higher across the road, but the bees went up and over like pole vaulters, resuming the same altitude as soon as they crossed.

A range of other possibilities are being explored, but so far no answer has been found. See the complete story in The Seattle Times, “Farmers worry that road project will turn productive bees into roadkill.”

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Alkali bee pollinating alfalfa. Photo by Douglas Walsh/WSU Prosser Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center.
Alkali bee pollinating alfalfa. Photo by Douglas Walsh/WSU Prosser Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center.

Trekking for pollinators

Here’s my newest crazy project: I want to learn which native pollinators visit which native plants in my local forests. So far, I’ve spent a lot of hours trekking around and finding very little. Oh, there are plenty of flowers; I just don’t see many pollinators on them. Furthermore, I can find almost nothing about this subject in books or online. My hunch is that little is known about who pollinates what in the wild.

In the Capitol State Forest. Mt.Rainier in the distance.
In the Capitol State Forest. Mt.Rainier in the distance.

Today, though, I found this bumble bee on a flower of Siberian minor’s lettuce, Clatonia sibirica. This plant, sometimes called candy flower, is common in the wetter wooded areas of our region. Whole hillsides of it are in bloom right now. The flowers are tiny and the bumble bee was huge, causing the flower to drape nearly to the ground. As you can see, the bee’s proboscis is slipped down between the sepals and the petals, rather than through the middle of the flower. I don’t know if this is common or if this particular bee was just clumsy.

Bumble bee on Siberian miner's lettuce.
Bumble bee on Siberian miner's lettuce.

And that brings me to another problem. I’m pretty good with plant identification and, when in doubt, I’m not too shabby with a dichotomous key and a dissecting kit. But bug i.d. is something else. Right now I’m shooting for family. If I can place the insect in a family, I feel like I’ve really accomplished something.

Daisies and common velvet grass (Holcus lanatus).
Daisies and common velvet grass (Holcus lanatus).

Right now the hillsides that were logged several years ago are teeming with native grasses and not-so native daisies, but the combination is enchanting. Also in abundance are native foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) and introduced dandelions (Taraxacum officinale). Honey bees are all over the dandelions and small sweat bees frequent the daisies. Bumble bees normally pollinate foxglove, although I saw none today.

Sweat bee on oxeye daisy.
Sweat bee on oxeye daisy.

Then there are the gorgeous flowers that everyone ignores, including the brightly lit native tiger lily (Lilium columbianum). Local superstition says that if you smell a tiger lily you will get freckles on your nose. Who knew?

Native tiger lily.
Native tiger lily.

And of course there are always surprises. I took a photo of a thimbleberry flower (Rubus parviflorus) and wondered about its lack of pollinators. But once on the computer, I saw bugs all over it. Hmm. No clue what they are, but they apparently like the flower.

Thimbleberry flower.
Thimbleberry flower.

It’s hard to convince people we need to conserve species when we know absolutely nothing about them. Wouldn’t it be a giant step forward if every field guide to flowers noted what pollinators normally attend that species? It’s something to think about—perhaps something to strive for.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Pollinator week: what’s the point?

It may surprise some of you that I’m not excited about Pollinator Week, June 18-24. How can someone who writes about pollinators nearly every day admit such a thing?

To me, every week is pollinator week. The conservation of pollinators is much too important to be relegated to a once-per-year “dialog” or “conversation” (terms I dislike) or to an annual count-the-butterflies day. The plant-pollinator-food chain is one of the most complex and misunderstood aspects of life of earth, and I find the idea of “Pollinator Week” diminishing rather than exalting.

In part the problem stems from the proliferation of celebrations that can last a day, a week, or a month. Besides National Pollinator Week, June 2012 contains National Fishing Week, National Clay Week, and National Camping Week. The whole month of July is National Hotdog Month. Other months contain American Craft Beer Week, National Post Card Week, and National Backyard Games Week. In the company of these other celebrations, Pollinator Week seems like a joke.

Also, Pollinator Week is vague. What the heck is a pollinator? During my undergraduate education I worked for a plant breeder. I cross pollinated alfalfa flowers—thousands of them—recorded crosses, tagged plants, and collected seed. In other words, I was a pollinator. But I get the distinct impression that the U.S. Senate was not thinking about me when they declared National Pollinator Week back in 2007.

Likewise, I hear very little talk about beetles, bats, flies, ants, birds, or the legions of Chinese farm workers who also spend their day pollinating plant life. As with most conservation efforts, all the attention focuses on spectacular or showy life forms—in this case big bees and gaudy butterflies—and the majority of species are ignored.

And while honey bees pollinate a large proportion of agricultural crops, here in the Western Hemisphere they are non-native managed livestock. Money for honey bee research comes from the agricultural industry, as well it should. Honey bee lover that I am, I don’t think conservation efforts should be aimed at honey bees here in the Americas because we can’t “conserve” something that wasn’t here in the first place.

It is difficult to grasp the complexity of pollinator conservation. It requires at least some knowledge of plant-pollinator mutualisms, geographic distribution of plants and animals, biodiversity, island biogeography, habitat fragmentation and destruction, gene pools and genetic drift, local extinction, biochemistry of pesticides, and modern farming practices . . . and that is just a beginning. Since our schools don’t do a good job with basic science and math, many kids graduate without the biology, chemistry, physics, math and statistics needed to master these tenets.

So instead of teaching concepts and principles during Pollinator Week we build bee blocks, count bumble bees, or plant a butterfly garden. These things are easy to do and popular, but they do little to reverse pollinator decline. Worse, they give the false impression that pollinator problems can be solved by spending a Saturday afternoon in the garden with a hammer and seed packet. And after that, we can move onto National Hotdog Month with a clear conscience.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Most flowering plant species are pollinated by beetles (Buchman & Nabhan 1996).
Most flowering plant species are pollinated by beetles (Buchman & Nabhan 1996).