To Bee or Not to Bee

Ten days ago, I had the great pleasure of attending a workshop, "Bringing your Garden to Life with Native Plants, Pollinators, and Birds". The workshop had been organized by Acterra, a Bay Area environmental organization with a variety of excellent programs.

I was impressed by the large turnout, the enthusiasm of the staff and the attendees, and the speakers (and the snacks were great, too). My favorite was a presentation by Jaime Pawelek, who works with the Urban Bee Garden project, part of UC Berkeley.

Jaime first talked about her research, which involves visiting gardens throughout the greater Bay Area and performing bee counts. And the result? I quote: "just in the East Bay cities of Albany and Berkeley 81 species of bees have been identified from residential neighborhoods." That really blew me away. I'm pretty sure I have maybe 10 different species of bees in my garden, but 81?


So I paid close attention to the next part of Jaime's talk, which was about attracting bees. Here's what she says (and I summarize, see the Urban Bee Garden Project for more):

• Don't use pesticides, herbicides, insecticidal soaps, or other nasty chemicals.
  
• You'll need plants with pollen and plants with nectar.
• Native bees prefer natives, but consider some exotics to make sure there's food year round.
• Leave some ground uncovered. Many native bees nest in the ground and can't get through the mulch.
  

Of course, that really made me think, and do more research. Among others, I came across the "In the Key of Bee" article of Bay Nature Magazine (Do click on the link, if only to see the green (!) sweat bee.)

I find that my garden is bee friendly because I don't use pesticides, and I do plant a lot of natives. But I'm not sure I have enough variety of blooming plants in summer and fall. And, worse than that, I have wood chips everywhere.

To improve bee friendliness, I'm going to plant some additional annuals. I just sent an order to Larner's Seeds, and was pleased to find that their order forms have a little pollinator icon (a bee) next to plants that are especially bee friendly. With some advice from Country Mouse, I hope to grow plants from these seeds and have happier bees. I might later spend more time with the handy lists on the Urban Bee Garden project's web site. I like those lists because they're tailored to California Gardens, though other useful sites (and lists) are easy to find (see, for example, pollinator.org)

I'll start moving some of the wood chips from the sunny chaparral areas to the redwood habitat. The sunny areas don't need the chips to hold water in because they don't get watered much. In fact, they might prefer to be chipless so they can dry out in winter. The redwood area can use mulch, and is covered with bark and needles even in nature. I'll keep the fruit trees mulched, but I'll create some mulch-free islands in which I can sow annuals. And, with luck, I'll find some bee's nests. It's a tentative plan, but an interesting project.

Before I get too distracted, I should mention that Jaime ended her talk with a slide show of different bees. Kind of the Victoria's Secrets fashion show slides for the wildlife gardener. We were all spellbound by the beauty and variety of the creatures she showed -- and all photographed in perfectly ordinary suburban gardens. Below, a final photo from my own garden, taken this spring. Will I have a green bee to show next year?