A Federal Strategy for Bees

The President signed a Memorandum Creating a Federal Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/06/20/presidential-memorandum-creating-federal-strategy-promote-health-honey-b. The memorandum directs several departments of the federal government to immediately address issues leading to the loss of honey bees and native pollinators. The memorandum speaks clearly of the need for action: “Pollinators contribute substantially to the economy of the United States and are vital to keeping fruits, nuts, and vegetables in our diets. Honey bee pollination alone adds more than $15 billion in value to agricultural crops each year in the United States. Over the past few decades, there has been a significant loss of pollinators, including honey bees, native bees, birds, bats, and butterflies, from the environment. The problem is serious and requires immediate attention to ensure the sustainability of our food production systems, avoid additional economic impact on the agricultural sector, and protect the health of the environment.” Honey bee losses have been clearly recorded, but the losses of other pollinators are more difficult to assess. Bumble bees live underground, and many native bees nest in foliage, often unseen. Monarch butterflies, often viewed as indicators of the health of the environment, reached their lowest recorded population level this year, and their migration is considered to be in danger of failing.

Among the action plans presented in the memorandum are the development of affordable seed mixes of native pollinator-friendly plants for honey bees and other pollinators, finding best management practices for reducing pollinator exposure to pesticides, restoring and enhancing pollinator habitat along road, power line, pipeline, and utility rights-of-way and federal lands. In one example of the efforts described in the memorandum the Departments of Agriculture and Interior will establish a reserve of native seed mixes for habitat rehabilitation after fires. The memorandum moves us closer to seeing our cities connected by flowering pollinator corridors along the interstate highways. Today’s photo: native Blue Orchard Bees find a nest in a package of staples in Peace Bee Farm’s woodshop.

--Richard

Preparing Pollinator Habitat

It is important to preserve both honey bees and native pollinators for us to continue to have abundant food, productive agriculture, healthy wildlife, and a diversity of plants and animals in the environment. While the honey bee performs the largest share of the pollination of commercial crops, the native pollinators also contribute by supplementing and filling in on the pollination requirements of flowers and crops. All of the vital pollinators need food and habitat to flourish. Urbanization that removes natural vegetation, the use of monoculture farming practices, and the widespread use of herbicides have removed much of the food supplies and habitat of the pollinators. The excessive use of insecticides and pesticides have reduced the numbers of insect pollinators and weakened many of the surviving insects.

We can help to provide for the pollinators by being aware that they need food, water, habitat, and places to breed and develop their offspring. Many of the pollinators have specific food and protected habitat requirements for their developing offspring. We can rapidly increase the pollinators in our lawns, gardens, orchards, and farms by leaving margins of “weedy,” un-mowed ground, water sources, plants, like milkweed, for larvae to feed upon, and nesting places. Blue orchard bees, or mason bees, are one of the easily attracted and highly effective native pollinators in North America. In the winter, when our honey bee activity is at a minimum, we prepare nesting areas for blue orchard bees, bumble bees, and other solitary bees. Blue orchard bees lay their eggs in holes in wood drilled by beetles or in the hollow stems of plants with pithy centers. Nesting tubes may be fashioned from bamboo canes or by drilling holes in untreated wood or dead trees. In the picture, Rita is drilling 5/16 inch holes in the trunk of a cottonwood tree that was struck by lightning. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation has a new fact sheet for building and maintaining nest sites for tunnel nesting bees at http://www.xerces.org/.
--Richard

Blue Orchard Bee Nests

With honey bees and many other pollinators declining in numbers, it is important to protect and expand their populations. By pollinating flowering plants, these creatures are quietly helping provide food for livestock, wildlife, and humans. The blue orchard bee, which is also known as the mason bee, is a native bee of North America. These gentle, solitary pollinators can be attracted by providing them with suitable nests. The natural nests of the blue orchard bee are abandoned tunnels bored in dead trees by beetles The blue orchard bee also nests in the hollow centers of pithy stemmed plants like swamp mallow. Both of these nesting habitats are often destroyed as humans clear dead trees and mow stands of weedy plants. Nesting tubes to accommodate the blue orchard bee can be easily built. Cut sections of bamboo cane at the joints and wire the pieces together in bundles with the open ends facing the same direction. These bundles of tubes, shown in the photo, can be placed in a protected place, such as under the eaves of a carport or building.

The blue orchard bee collects nectar and pollen from flowers and deposits it inside a tube. Next, she lays an egg in the tube and seals it with mud. The bee continues depositing eggs, each furnished with nectar and pollen for food, in the tubes. A six-inch tube will hold five or six eggs, each separated by a seal of mud. Like the honey bee, the blue orchard bee determines the sex of the offspring by laying a fertilized egg to become a female or by laying an infertile egg to become a male. The blue orchard bee is solitary; each female lays her own eggs. There is no sharing of egg-laying responsibility as there is in the honey bee colony where a queen lays all eggs. The blue orchard bees lay their eggs in the spring, and the offspring emerge in the spring of the following year.
--Richard

Morning Glory in Bloom

Morning glory, also called hedge bindweed, is in bloom on vines covering fences and idle farm equipment. The prolific vines cover any object in a sunny area. I found a morning glory vine climbing the rope of our old farm bell, which evidently had not been pulled in a while. The flowers are white funnels with tints of lavender. Visiting morning glory shortly after sunrise finds the blossoms being visited by numerous native pollinators. Honey bees prefer to visit flowers with a more open blossom. Click on today’s picture to see a blue orchard bee approaching a morning glory flower. Blue orchard bees, also called mason bees, are shiny, blue-black in color. They are often mistaken for bottle flies. These gentle and fast flying native bees hit a flower hard, and then scrub their bodies around the inside the flower before zooming off. In the process of scrubbing around inside the flowers, the blue orchard bees cover their bodies with pollen which they carry along to the next flower, very effectively pollinating the plant. While honey bees and bumble bees carry their pollen in pollen baskets on their hind legs, blue orchard bees carry their pollen on hairs on the underside of their abdomen.

The honey bee is the most widely employed pollinator, but our agriculture, food supply, and even our wildlife are healthier if we have a diversity of pollinators available. Having an assortment of native pollinators available within flying range of agricultural crops makes them more productive. To have a diversity of pollinators we need a diversity of flowering plants and habitats. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation is dedicated to protecting pollinators The Xerces Society offers plans for managing habitat for native pollinators at their web site, http://www.xerces.org/. It is easy for us to provide flowering plants and nesting places for the blue orchard bees. They are useful and enjoyable to have in the garden.
--Richard

Evening Primrose in Bloom

The evening primrose is a nighttime blooming wildflower. While I have observed it being worked at dawn by honey bees foraging for pollen, it primarily attracts other pollinators. I have seen flies, moths, butterflies, and solitary bees working evening primrose early in the morning. Luna moths, the size of small birds, work the flowers at night. Click on the picture to see a blue orchard bee foraging for pollen in an evening primrose blossom. The fast flying and gentle blue orchard bee strikes the flower hard and then scrubs its body around inside of the blossom. Its active movement inside the flower makes the blue orchard bee an effective pollinator. The native blue orchard bee carries its load of pollen on hairs on the lower side of the bee’s abdomen.

The current research program that the USDA is funding to study bee health involves both honey bees and other pollinators. Bees that are not honey bees, called non-apis bees, are being established in managed arrangements at each of the seven bee yard locations in the nation-wide study. The purpose of this study of these non-apis bees is to determine if there are cross infections between the species. Bumble bees are being sampled to check for stress and, hopefully, increase efficiency of their use as pollinators. The investigators are also studying the effects of the neonicitinoid pesticides, like Imidacloprid, on the non-apis bees. They are looking into the sub-lethal effects of these pesticides and any effects caused by their residues. The non-apis bees, like the blue orchard bee, serve an important role in helping to pollinate flowering plants. They help the honey bee complete the pollination required to produce fruit and seeds for wildlife and humans.
--Richard