[Pollinator] Gardening for bees article in today's Wall Street Journal

[Rufus Isaacs]

Gardens With a Buzz

Homeowners Brave Stings To Attract Beleaguered Bees; The Lemonade Incident
By JUNE FLETCHER
July 13, 2007; Page W8

Here is the latest buzz in eco-heroism: bee gardens.

Amid reports about the widespread decline of the 
honeybee population, increasing numbers of 
homeowners are braving stings and sometimes 
alarming neighbors by turning their yards into 
bee-friendly habitats. Some are shunning 
pesticides, planting flowers that bees like, and 
even creating nesting sites for the beleaguered insects.

European honeybees, major crop pollinators that 
were imported to this country almost four 
centuries ago, have been dying off in huge 
numbers from mysterious causes (everything from 
parasitic mites to cell phones have been 
implicated in their decline). Now, the garden 
industry is pushing homeowners to create bee 
gardens that will attract and nourish them as 
well as other, indigenous species.
Laurie Gardener gives a tour of her bee garden in 
Northern California, which she created to foster bee population growth.

The latest campaigns emphasize insects over 
aesthetics. Most promote native plants, which 
often have smaller and less showy blooms than 
cultivated hybrids but more of the nectar and 
pollen that attract honeybees. Suppliers are also 
pitching products that can provide shelter for 
some of the 4,000 native species, such as orchard 
and leaf-cutter bees, that experts say could take 
up the slack should their European cousins continue to disappear.

Such efforts have a direct connection to 
America's dinner tables. One-third of the food 
eaten in this country is pollinated by insects, 
according to the Department of Agriculture, and 
the honeybee is responsible for 80% of that 
pollination, without which plants won't bear 
fruits, seeds, vegetables or nuts. The honeybee 
is the country's foremost crop pollinator, says 
Troy Fore, executive director of the American 
Beekeeper Federation. But if native bee 
populations are robust, Mr. Fore says, "we won't starve."

Crazy Preoccupation
After reading about the distressed honeybees, 
Janet Allen decided to give up pesticides last 
summer and turn her 14,400-square-foot yard in 
Syracuse, N.Y., into an insect habitat. The 
retired software engineer filled her front yard 
with beds of colorful plants favored by 
honeybees, such as milkweed, penstemon and 
goldenrod (she bought unusual varieties so 
neighbors wouldn't recognize them as roadside 
weeds). She also put in half-a-dozen "bee boxes" 
that she bought online for about $30 a piece. The 
boxes attract some native species that, unlike 
hive-dwelling honeybees, prefer to go it alone, 
nesting in individual burrows in logs or holes in 
the soil. Her husband, a lawyer, built two more 
this spring from scratch, using scrap lumber and elderberry bush stems.

The couple's two adult children think this 
preoccupation with bees -- the yard now attracts 
dozens of the furry pollinators -- is "crazy," 
but Ms. Allen considers it a higher calling: 
"It's part of our responsibility as parents to 
leave a living planet." Janet Allen's bee garden 
attracts dozens of the pollinating insects.

While it's unclear what, if anything, backyard 
bee gardens will be able to do to stop the 
decline of the honeybee, there's no question that 
the insect is in trouble. Though periodic 
die-offs have occurred before, most recently in 
the '80s, the current bee decline, which started 
about five years ago, took a turn for the worse 
last fall. According to the Apiary Inspectors of 
America, about a quarter of the 2.4 million 
commercial hives have been lost since then.

FOR THE BETTERMENT OF BEES
Until recently, many gardeners just sprayed or 
swatted when they saw a bee. But now that these 
pollinators are in danger of disappearing, a 
number of groups are publishing tips on how to 
attract and help them. Among them:
<http://www.reimangardens.iastate.edu/>Reiman Gardens at Iowa State University
Comment: Recently hosted a "Bee Aware" gardening display in its conservatory
Tip: Leave dead tree branches and a few patches 
of bare ground and mud to attract native bees
<http://www.pollinator.org/>North American Pollinator Protection Campaign
Comment: Is giving away a cardboard wheel showing 
which flowers are most attractive to bees, from sunflowers to sedum.
Tip: Try not to use pesticides, but if you must, 
apply at night when bees aren't active.
<http://nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens/index_research.html>University 
of California Urban Bee 
Project<http://nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens/index_research.html>
Comment: Publishes a list of dozens of plants 
that native bees visit, by season.
Tip: Don't remove weeds like dandelions or clover 
until they've finished blooming.

No one tracks the number of bee gardens in the 
U.S., and they aren't being promoted in big-box 
stores like Lowe's and Home Depot. But the home 
and garden firms that do sell bee-related 
products report that sales are sweet. Smith & 
Hawken, in Novato, Calif., says sales are strong 
for bee plants that it markets online such as 
Spanish lavender and an echinacea called "Fatal 
Attraction"; a buddleia called "Honeycomb" is sold out.

Another major retailer, Dutch Gardens, a division 
of Gardener's Supply in Burlington, Vt., recently 
published a "pollinator primer" on its Web site 
that explains the preferences of various types of 
bees, with links to popular plants it sells such 
as "Fireball" monarda and hardy gloxinia; sales 
of such plants are up 30% over last year, the 
company says. Raintree Nursery in Morton, Wash., 
says year-over-year sales of its "bee blocks" -- 
wooden blocks seeded with the young of mason bees 
that can be placed in flowerbeds -- are up 25%. 
And Windowbox.com, a Vernon, Calif., retailer, 
says sales of its $25 "bird, bee and butterfly 
garden" have doubled this year over last, while 
sales of bee and wasp traps have dropped 70%.

It takes a certain amount of nerve -- and a leap 
of faith -- for even the most ecologically 
committed gardeners to get over their fear of 
bees, despite the fact that native species are 
largely nonaggressive and have mild stings. 
Honeybees, also mild-mannered, do attack if 
they're swatted or stepped on, causing anything 
from a painful red bump to a deadly reaction in allergic individuals.

So it was with some trepidation that Jennifer 
O'Donovan bought a bee garden from Windowbox.com 
earlier this spring. Her 5-year-old daughter, 
Megan, had become fascinated with some docile 
honeybees she'd seen at a nearby pond, and her 
mother wanted to encourage her to help the 
environment. When it came time to plant the 
flower seeds, the Mendon, Mass., homemaker picked 
a tiny plot as far away from her children's play 
set as she could. Now she and her daughter watch 
the dozen or so bees that have started to 
frequent the flowers, but from a safe distance. 
"I know bees are important," says Ms. O'Donovan, 
"but I also know what they can do."

So does Abbey Duke, a catering-company owner who 
recently created a bee garden in her Burlington, 
Vt., yard filled with flowering herbs 
interspersed with old logs into which she drilled 
holes for nests. Earlier this summer, however, 
she was a bit horrified when, at a barbecue, the 
host -- a fellow bee-gardener -- accidentally 
drank one of the insects after it landed on his 
glass of lemonade and stung his tongue. He spent 
the rest of the party moaning in pain and sucking 
on an ice cube. Still, Ms. Duke has no plans to 
give up her own backyard apiary, which she 
considers important to the environment. "I'm hard to scare," she says.

'Broad Floral Generalists'
Utah State University bee biologist Jim Cane says 
that while some bees have specialized food and 
nesting needs, others are "broad floral 
generalists," not particularly fussy about what 
they eat or where they live. Bees can sustain 
themselves for a long time on the robust 
flowering weeds commonly found on small vacant city lots, for example.

In fact, many types of bees prefer the small, 
single blossoms of weeds and wildflowers to the 
huge double blooms of hybrids, such as tea roses 
or carnations, which are bred to produce extra 
petals rather than nectar and pollen. Realizing 
this, Jan Josifek, a weaver, has allowed invasive 
and gangly plants that she doesn't really like, 
like fleabane, goldenrod and bellflower, to 
flourish in her three St. Paul, Minn., 
flowerbeds. The plants are full of bees all 
season, but at a price: She must give up space 
she'd rather use for showier flowers and spends 
tedious hours "deadheading," or removing the 
wildflowers' spent blossoms, after the bees have 
fertilized them. "If I didn't, the plants would 
make millions of seeds and take over my yard," she says.

Some entomologists are so convinced of the 
importance of creating backyard habitats that 
they're planting bee gardens in their own yards. 
Noticing that the gardens in his neighborhood are 
mostly filled with hybrid flowers, Lansing, 
Mich., entomologist Rufus Isaacs has planted 
native perennials and berries that attract hordes 
of bees -- as well as nervous neighbors. "The 
bees are too busy eating to worry about humans as 
long as you watch and don't bother them," Mr. Isaacs says.

Tucson, Ariz., entomologist Justin O. Schmidt, 
whose legendary "sting pain index" is derived 
from his observations of being personally stung 
by more than 78 species and 41 genera of venomous 
insects, is similarly blasé. He recently added a 
black light to his yard to draw bees to plantings 
of milkweed, desert broom and butterfly bush. Two 
weeks ago, his 9-year-old son went out to look at 
the light and was stung on his bare foot by a 
honeybee. "My son was squawking, but I used it as 
a teachable moment," says Mr. Schmidt, who calmly 
told his son that if he'd been wearing shoes, he 
would have avoided the incident.

Beekeepers have reported that entire colonies of 
honeybees -- an average commercial hive holds 
50,000 bees -- let loose in fields to help with 
crop pollination have failed to return to their 
nests, and studies of stray dead bees found on 
the ground have shown them riddled with a 
combination of viruses, bacteria and fungi. The 
exact cause of the bee problem, dubbed Colony 
Collapse Disorder, is a mystery, says Mr. Fore, 
of the beekeeper federation. Various theories 
have been raised, including overuse of 
pesticides, mite infestation, and even wireless 
or cellphone use (the signals purportedly confuse 
the bees' ability to return to the hives).

Susan Moser, a Morton, Wash., organic farmer, 
recently decided to turn her front lawn into a 
clover-filled meadow to attract wild bees, and 
she says she looks the other way when they drill 
holes into her front porch. Two decades ago, she 
kept a few honeybee hives around, but quit after 
a few years because it was too much trouble to 
keep the sticky boxes clean. Giving up a patch of 
lawn and allowing bees to live, literally, in her 
house is a lot easier -- and seems like a small 
sacrifice for the besieged creatures that 
pollinate her apple trees, raspberry bushes and other plants.

"It's stressful to be a bee," she says.

Write to June Fletcher at <mailto:june.fletcher at wsj.com>june.fletcher at wsj.com 
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