Idaho’s Treasure Valley is an irrigated desert
surrounded by mountains. The valley is the home to bees and beekeepers.
Abundant flowering plants in urban and suburban landscapes plus a diversity of
flowering agricultural crops supply bees with nectar and pollen in exchange for
pollination. The result is fruit and seed. Warm fall days in the valley find
large numbers of insects—both beneficial and pest. Flowering plants are heavily
visited by honey bees, sweat bees, and numerous other small native bees. Yellow
jackets, those dangerous and easily irritated ground-dwelling wasps, are in
great abundance. Unlike honey bees which sting only to defend their nest,
yellow jackets sting unprovoked. Flies are in such abundance that local stores
can’t keep swatters in stock. Their numbers can probably be attributed to
recent rainfalls moistening the waste from the area’s livestock.
A day’s trip into the Oahee Mountains adjacent to
the valley finds mule deer grazing on annual grasses greening the draughty
mountain slopes. Here, along the old Oregon Trail we find abandoned gold and
silver mines and the remains of miners’ cabins. As we climb in altitude, fall
flowers, scattered among the sage brush and junipers, do not reveal their
pollinators—likely night-flying moths and bats. Willow and aspen trees grow
below mountain springs. Beavers turn spring-fed streams into lush marshes, even
at altitude in these volcanic mountains, named “Oahee” for “Hawaii” by their
Hawaiian settlers. A trip into the Oahees reveals the delicate balance and
interrelationship between the plants, mammals, insects, and other pollinators
in this ecosystem of thin soil and scarce rainfall. The pollinators help
produce the seed for plants which provide food for wildlife—deer, mountain
sheep and goats, and wild horses—as well as herds of open-range cattle. The
waste from the mammals carries nutrients high into the mountains to fertilize
the plant life. Northern harriers soar across mountain slopes searching for
small mammals gathering seeds. Unknowingly, through pollination, bees, bats, and
moths feed hawks, cattle, and deer.
--Richard
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