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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/24/garden/24garden.html?_r=1&ref=garden&oref=slogin<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>April 24, 2008<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><nyt_kicker>In the Garden<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</nyt_kicker>
<h1><nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" "><b><font size=6 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:24.0pt'>Humming Praises for the Wild Bee <o:p></o:p></span></font></b></nyt_headline></h1>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><nyt_byline version="1.0" type=" "></nyt_byline>By <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/anne_raver/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
title="More Articles by Anne Raver">ANNE RAVER</a><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><nyt_text></nyt_text>I’VE
been watching the bumblebees flying around the kitchen porch of our old
farmhouse in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Maryland</st1:place></st1:State>,
and wondering if they have a nest nearby, maybe under the eaves. They like
shady spots, protected from the wind and the rain. There are probably some
mason bees, too, holed up in the old boards of the barn, or in holes drilled by
wood beetles in the trunks of dead trees. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
bumblebee and other native wild bees are all the more important in the garden
now that the population of honeybees is in such decline — down to 2.4
million colonies last year from 5.5 million in 1945, according to the
Department of Agriculture, due mainly, scientists say, to mites infesting the
hives and, lately, to a mysterious epidemic called colony collapse disorder. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Native
bees pollinate everything from pear and cherry trees to blueberries, tomatoes
and eggplant. They are also fascinating to watch.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>So the
next time a bumblebee buzzes around your head, don’t swat at it. Follow
it around. You might see it mating, or gathering nectar and pollen and flying
off to its nest. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>There are
more than 4,000 species of native bees, according to “The Status of
Pollinators in North America,” a 2007 report by the <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_research_council/index.html?inline=nyt-org"
title="More articles about National Research Council">National Research Council</a>
in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:State>.
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Their
total numbers are difficult to estimate because native bees are “hard to
identify — they’re small, they fly under people’s
radar,” said Scott Black, an entomologist and the executive director of
the Xerces Society, an organization that studies insects. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>But
native bees are on the decline too and we need to encourage them, now that
there are fewer honeybees. (The society has compared field studies from the
1950s through the 1970s with more recent studies, he said, and found
“drastic decline” in at least three species of bumblebees: the
Western bumblebee, the rusty-patched bumblebee and the yellow-banded
bumblebee.) <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
European honeybee, Apis mellifera, was brought here by the colonists in the
early 1600s to make honey, said Tristram Seidler, the staff ecologist for the
New England Wild Flower Society. “Its pollination service was only
recognized later on,” he said.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Until
then, from the time the first flowering plant was pollinated by a bee 120
million years ago, native bees had been doing the job just fine. In fact, Mr.
Seidler said, they are at least 10 times more efficient than honeybees.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>“They
visit more plants per hour, at a fast speed, and make pollen more
available,” he said.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Native
bees fly farther between flowers, thus doing a better job at cross-pollinating
than do honeybees.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>And
honeybees are at a disadvantage when it comes to certain flowers, like the
blueberry. “Its petals are joined, with a very small opening, so the bee
can’t even force himself inside,” Mr. Seidler said.
“That’s why buzz pollination” — the bumblebee’s
specialty — “is more effective.”<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Buzz
pollination is a process that sounds very nice for both flower and bee:
Bumblebees and some other native bees “use their flight muscles to
vibrate the flower until the pollen is shaken loose,” Mr. Seidler said.
Like honeybees, they use their middle pair of legs to gather the pollen into
pollen sacks. “You can see these on bees when they’re flying
by.”<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Sometimes
they sit on the flower and vibrate; sometimes they hang upside down and do
their thing. And when they fly off to other flowers, some of that pollen just
naturally falls off and pollinates the plants.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Mason
bees don’t have pollen sacks. “They have rows of stiff hairs on
their lower abdomens,” Mr. Seidler said. “They use their legs to
pack the pollen into those hairs, so that when they’re crawling around on
other flowers, the sticky stigmas will get the pollen.”<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>That
makes them better pollinators than honeybees, he said, because they are small
and can really get down into those flowers.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Honeybees,
however, build large colonies of 20,000 to 100,000 bees, so they have the
numbers to pollinate huge commercial orchards or fields of tomatoes or
strawberries. So growers have long rented them from commercial beekeepers, who
truck in their hives, much like migrant workers, to pollinate the flowers when
they open. When the job is done, they haul them out again, and the growers can
spray the crops without harming the bees, which are sensitive to pesticides.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>But now
growers have an economic incentive to reduce their pesticide use — to
help encourage the native bees in their area, which are not, of course, trucked
in and out of their habitat.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>“We
do think that pesticides could very well be one of the stress factors on the
honeybee,” said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the acting state apiarist with the
Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. But as with habitat loss, another
logical stress factor, it is difficult to prove a direct connection.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Growers
are also planting long strips of native plants, like lupine, poppies and
goldenrod, to feed the native bees and help them flourish.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Gardeners
can do the same thing, in backyards and terraces.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>“You
need to have continuous blooming, especially in early spring and late
fall,” Mr. Seidler said. “Plant natives with a mix of flower shapes
to accommodate a variety of pollinators.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Different
native bees have different life cycles, some only a few weeks long, which is
why a mix of plants that bloom from spring through fall will keep a variety of
bee species well fed.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>There are
a few basic tenets for the bee gardener to keep in mind: First, limit the use
of pesticides, or stop using them altogether. That includes spraying the lawn
with herbicides.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Provide a
source of water and clay because mason bees build their nests with mud.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>“You
don’t need much,” Mr. Seidler said. “Dig a tiny hole —
a couple shovelfuls of clay soil — and add water every couple days.
They’ll find it if it’s there.” If you have no clay soil, go
to an art supply store and buy some potter’s clay.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Some
native bees seek out patches of bare ground, especially sandy banks that face
south or east, where they can get sun. Others will nest in standing snags or
dead trees, if the bark is removed. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>They like
brush piles too, particularly with hollow-stemmed plants like sumac, teasle or
bamboo, which have nodes in the stems that make natural compartments for the
bees.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>It’s
funny what happens when you start paying attention to one thing and it leads to
another. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>I
haven’t found out where those bumblebees outside the kitchen door are
nesting. But when I sat down on an old bench in the barn to take off my garden
boots, I saw a little black bee crawling into a hole in the wood. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>I think
it was a mason bee — and I welcomed her.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><span class=bold><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Care and Feeding of Local Bees</span></font></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>You can
help native bees by building them shelters. Bundle sticks of sumac and bamboo,
with the open ends all going one way and the closed ends going the other. Then
place the bundle where it is sheltered from the rain. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>To make
houses for mason bees, drill holes of different sizes in a block of wood.
Bumblebee boxes are a bit more complicated: they resemble bird houses, but with
a smaller hole, and are filled with some kind of nesting material, like cotton
batting. (Instructions for building both nests are at <a
href="http://xerces.org/Pollinator_Insect_Conservation/xerces_publications.htm">xerces.org/Pollinator_Insect_Conservation/xerces_publications.htm</a>.)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Two
excellent guides to bee gardening are the Xerces Society’s
“Pollinator Conservation Handbook” and “The Wildlife
Gardener’s Guide” from the <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/b/brooklyn_botanic_garden/index.html?inline=nyt-org"
title="More articles about Brooklyn Botanic Garden">Brooklyn Botanic Garden</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>As luck
would have it, the plants bees love are pleasing to humans, too: trees and
shrubs like dogwoods, sweet pepperbush, elderberries, blueberries and
viburnums, especially Viburnum dentatum, V. cassionoides and V. lentago. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Flowers
that bees like include monkshood, aster, Indigo, buckwheat, great blue lobelia,
blazingstar, lupine, <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Virginia</st1:place></st1:State>
bluebells, penstemon and salvia.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>As for
herbs, try anise hyssop, borage, marjoram, oregano and rosemary. Bees will
nuzzle some exotics too, especially the old-fashioned single-flowered
snapdragons, lavenders, catmints, Russian sage and speedwell. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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