Where are the bees?

And how to see more of them

More than once this summer, social media posts, and people I have chatted with around town, have asked “Where are the bees?”

Now that’s a good question. Firstly, I think that it is worth defining what is a bee. There is what science means by a bee, what I think of when I hear the word bee and what the average guy in his garden is possibly thinking of.

So, depending on who is speaking, a bee is …

1. A hive or honey bee (Apis mellifera)

2. A bumblebee - any one of over 250 species in the genus Bombus

3. Any one of more than 16,000 related species worldwide, of which nearly 800 can be found in Canada.

Hive or honey bees. These are the bees most people think of as “real” bees. They live in hives, they are mostly managed commercially, they are important pollinators of our fruit crops, and they give us honey. I once kept a few bee hives and I am uncertain if that give is quite the right word there. It’s not commonly known, but these iconic bees are European and Asian in origin – they are not a native species in North America where, in fact, if there are too many hives in an area, they can compete with native wild bees to their detriment. Our native bees have managed to do all the pollination nature needs before Apis mellifera ever arrived on these shores, and given a chance could do so again.

Bumble bees Only fertilised “queens” overwinter and all the rest die. In spring, the surviving queens first have to create a nest, lay eggs, raise some young and get the population booming again. This means that apart from the queens early in the season, you should not expect to see too many bumbles in the fields and gardens until mid-summer when populations have grown enough to be visible and when the flowers that they like are flowering. One flower that they adore is golden rod, which many people think of as the harbinger of fall/autumn even when it starts flowering in early-August. In other words, asking “Where are the bees?”, and if by bees you are thinking of bumbles, too early in the year before we can expect there to be many around is the wrong question. Patience. Bumbles are affected by habitat loss and too many lawns – more of this below.

Solitary and other bees. The other fifteen thousand or so mostly unnoticed bees often don’t look much like bees to the untrained eye, are not colony forming species but solitary in their nature and are present through the summer in successive waves. The trouble is that we don’t “see” them or even recognize them. They are important pollinators, however, and we can all encourage and help them by our gardening practices – a drum I will continue to beat.

In the Image above (all pictures from my garden) going clockwise: Brown-belted Bumblebee, Honey/Hive Bee, Dunning's Miner Bee, Two-spotted Bumblebee.

What’s to be done?

Now, there is no doubt at all that insects in general are declining in numbers all over the world. We all know the reasons – habitat loss, climate change, pesticides (especially neonicotinoids), diseases and factors like that. Factors that the world could reverse if only we wanted to. Well, I want to, but I am not in charge of these things.

My conclusion is that, indeed there are, generally speaking, fewer bees around than we have grown to expect at this of the year, BUT the way to return them to their former ubiquity is to take some action and do what we can as individuals

1. Speak loudly and frequently to the politicians who represent our interests and demand that they change the way that the bit of the world they are responsible for is managed. A good start would be to persuade them to ban the use of insecticides such as neonicotinoids. Be the squeaky wheel.

2. Do something practical that is actually within our power. We are not helpless, there are steps we can all take individually instead of calmly waiting for “the system” to take responsibility. If you have a garden then there are things that you can do starting today. Reduce the area that is mown lawn and increase the area that is growing native plants that bees will want and be able to make use of. Create places in our gardens where bees of all species can nest and raise their broods. If we don’t do this then we are partially responsible (not alone, of course) for their population decline. Create the habitat that a bee needs and the bees will find it in due course. Each gardener doing this puts a brick in the wall. Some steps to take include, but are not limited to, the following:

   1. Keep patches of land unmown and untilled to provide secure and undisturbed nesting sites for ground-nesting bees. Many native bees build nests in soil, so leave some bare patches of soil and limit your use of mulch. Don’t compress the soil, bees are not as strong as we are.

   2. Some bees hibernate and lay eggs in hollow plant stems. If you do cut, leave the bottom 8 inches in place. Bundle the cut stems and place them in a corner of your garden. Sticks and stems that are put out for waste collection too early in spring often contain overwintering bees and other insects. In spring, wait until temperatures are consistently above 10C at night before cleaning up your garden. Note: 10C is a bit arbitrary, but it’s a useful rule of thumb. The point being that if it’s still too cool the insects would not be active yet and by cleaning up too early you might throw away the creatures you want to keep.

   3. Planting multiples of the same plant together in large groups makes it easier for pollinators to find and collect pollen when they flower. Insects need a continuous source of pollen and nectar so select a variety of plants that will bloom from spring to fall.

These are simple things, but if enough people put them into effect, we could well see more bees in the years ahead. “Bee” the first and tell your friends.

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EXTRA:

Bees and Flowers … having read my piece above I think you may enjoy reading this very interesting Substack by another author that is not unrelated to my theme. Its title is A Duplicitous Flower and its Rare Bee

A Duplicitous Flower and its Rare Bee

Quote: By no means a botanist, I am driven to these flowers by inordinate beauty and routine curiosity. Taken together, at least for me, beauty and curiosity breed exuberance.

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