[Pollinator] NPW - WI - Attract native bees to the home garden

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>From Chippewa Herald, Chippewa Falls, WI

Green Space: Attract native bees to the home garden

By JERRY CLARK
For the Herald
Thursday, June 25, 2009 10:03 AM CDT


Bees are as much a symbol of summertime as beaches, boating and 
baseball. They can be seen working in flower beds, vegetable gardens, 
and yards (especially those with dandelions) all summer long.

Collecting nectar and pollen and helping to pollinate fields and 
gardens are what bees are designed to do. The benefits of bees are 
numerous especially when we chow down on delicious tomatoes or juicy 
apples.

Bees, however, get a bad reputation as being a nuisance at a picnic or 
buzzing around the yard when we are trying to enjoy our brief, warm 
weather. Bees are even considered a pest by some people because they 
are not correctly identified or are not aware of the benefits bees 
bring to our lives.

Bees differ almost in as many ways as the plants they visit. Native 
bees and the common European honeybee are very different in the way 
they work and the benefits they bring.

Approximately 4,000 types of native bees are in North America and many 
are present in our area. We are most familiar with the bumble bee. 
Different types of bumble bees exist with the most common being the 
yellow banded bumble bee. Rusty patched and western bumble bees are 
still found but have declined in numbers and are very seldom observed.

Other20native bees working in our area include leaf-cutter and mason 
bees but their numbers are declining also. Decline in native bee 
numbers can be attributed to diseases, parasitic mites and loss of 
habitat. We many not be able to help control the diseases and parasites 
harming our native bees but we can help create a beneficial habitat for 
them.

Over 100 crop species in North America require a visit from an insect 
pollinator to be most productive. In the past, native bees and feral 
honey bees could meet the pollination needs of orchards, tomato and 
pumpkin fields and berry patches, because these farms were typically 
adjacent to areas of habitat that harbored important pollinators.

Today, many farms are larger and, at the same time, have less nearby 
habitat to support native pollinators. To ensure adequate pollination 
services, producers now rely on European honey bees.

Many of us love the taste of honey and are grateful for the European 
honeybee for this delicacy. However, the honeybee is not a native bee 
and there are no honeybees native to North America. The European 
honeybee is the bee used for commercial honey production and 
pollination.

Native bees, on the other hand, create very little honey, if any at 
all. Pollination is what native bees do best. Insect pollination is 
critical for the production of many important crops in our area 
including apples, blackberries, blueberries, canola, cherries, 
cucumbers,
 cranberries, pears, plums, pumpkins, squash, sunflowers, 
tomatoes and watermelons. Native bees provide free pollination services 
and enhance garden productivity through increased yields and 
improvements in produce quality.

Native bees can increase yields in your garden through a process called 
buzz pollination where the bee grabs onto a flower’s stamens and 
vibrates its flight muscles, releasing a burst of pollen from deep 
pores in the anther or the male part of the flower.

European honeybees do not buzz pollinate. This behavior is highly 
beneficial for the cross-pollination of tomatoes, peppers, cranberries 
and blueberries, among other plants.

Although tomatoes don’t require a pollinator to set fruit, buzz 
pollination by native bees results in larger and more abundant fruit. 
Research has shown that a 45 percent increase in yield is obtainable 
when native bees pollinate tomatoes.

Cucurbits like melons and squash do not self-pollinate as they have 
separate male and female flowers. Female flowers on cucurbits are only 
open for six to seven hours on one day and must receive 500-1,000 
pollen grains in order to be adequately pollinated. Native bees can 
pollinate cucurbits much more efficiently than European honeybees as 
they can carry much more pollen from flower to flower.

Since the goal in our garden is to harvest as much quality produce as 
possible, enhancing the habitat of native bees is one way to achieve 
0Athis goal. First, native bees must have access to a diversity of plants 
with overlapping blooming times so that flowers are available to forage 
from early in the spring until late in the fall.

And, because native bees come in a range of sizes, it is important to 
provide flowers of various sizes, shapes, and colors, in order to 
support a diverse community of bees.

Some native plants that attract native bees include aster, cup plant, 
joe pye weed, milkweed, purple coneflower, beebalm, goldenrod, lobelia, 
penstemon, rattlesnake master, blazing star, ironweed, lupine, prairie 
clover and spiderwort.

Second, they need places to nest. Most native bees are solitary, and 
none build the wax or paper structures we associate with honey bees or 
wasps. Most bees nest in small warrens of tunnels and cells they 
construct underground.

Others nest in narrow tunnels often left behind by beetle larvae in 
dead trees, and a few use the soft pith in some plants.

Bumble bees — the most familiar social bee group native to our area — 
require small cavities, either in tree boles, underground, or under 
clumps of fallen grass. Leaving a few stumps or dead trees in the area 
is a great way to enhance nesting areas.

Often, native bees move into old rodent burrows. Whether underground or 
in snags, most solitary bees spend most of the year maturing in their 
nest (brood) cells. In these cells, they are vulnerable t
o mechanical 
nest disturbances such as deep soil tillage or tree removal.

Bumble bees are different. Because their nests are started anew each 
spring by over-wintering queens, bumble bees need both cavities to 
raise their young as well as undisturbed duff for queens to burrow and 
hibernate through the winter.

Finally, bees need protection from most pesticides. Insecticides are 
primarily broad-spectrum and are therefore deadly to bees. Furthermore, 
indiscriminate herbicide use can remove many of the flowers that bees 
need for food.

Native bees play an important role in our food production systems. 
Making life a little easier for them will result in more delicious 
produce for us.

Jerry Clark is the Crops and Soils Educator for UW-Extension Chippewa 
County.  He earned a B.S. and M.S. in Agriculture Education from 
UW-River Falls and serves as the advisor for the Chippewa Valley Master 
Gardener Program.



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