Bees help ensure humans have plenty of food

By Bev Johnson | The Daily Journal

Published Saturday, October 27, 2007

We have all heard about the disaster called colony collapse among honey bees. Much of our food is reliant on bees for pollination. Honey bees do a great job, as there are huge colonies of them — 10,000 to 30,000 per colony.

They are a managed pollinator; transported long distances all over the country. The problem with that is that the diseases and pests that prey on them go along.

Since the gardener can't depend on the honey bee to pollinate his garden, is he doomed to eat "store" tomatoes the rest of his life? Horrible thought.

Enter the lowly bumble bee. She does a pretty good job even though her colony may have as few as 50 bees. She is more efficient at transporting pollen.

For one thing, bumble bees do "buzz pollination." The bee grabs the pollen producing structure in her jaws and vibrates her wings. She shakes the snot out of that flower, getting covered in pollen in the process.

Tomatoes need this type of pollination for effective fruit set. They also adapt well to the greenhouse environment, making green house operators very happy.

Another attribute of bumble bees is that some of them have very long tongues. They can get nectar out of flowers with long tubes like red clover.

They have evolved along with native flowering plants and are very effective pollinators of many of our garden vegetables and flowers. While they, too, have diseases and pests, they are not the same "bugs" that honey bees have.

Bumble bees don't use hives. They nest in the ground, typically in old mouse nests or in clumps of grass above ground.

To attract these fuzzy pollinators to your yard, leave some tall grasses and untilled spots for them to nest in. Since bumble bees get all their nutrients from flowers, you can have a beautiful garden and help the bees at the same time.

Early spring flowers are very important, as this is when the colonies are feeding baby bees.

They especially like flowers that are blue, purple and yellow in big clumps. You can feed your bees with willow, Azaleas, Beardstongue in early spring. Summer flowers to plant are clover, Anise hyssop, Bee Balm, of course, purple prairie clover, and Joe-pye weed.

Asters will feed both butterflies and bees in the fall as will goldenrod.

No, goldenrod does not cause hay fever. The culprit is the ragweed that blooms at the same time.

Somewhere in the files at the Extension office, there is a pamphlet or perhaps it's a book called "Befriending Bumble Bees," that tells you how to raise your own bumble bees.

One nice thing about these bees is that they pay little attention to people. They are too busy to bother us. Don't swat at them and they won't stab you.

The bad thing is, all their honey goes to feeding their colony. We will still need honey bees for that.

Bev Johnson is a master gardener for Wes Otter Tail County. Elaine Evens, who has a M.S. degree in Entomology from the University of Minnesota, supplied this information.