Sunday, 23 March 2008

• Update: "Bee"-dazzled

  After the disaster in the bee industry known as colony collapse disorder (CCD) the investigation continues. Since then a stop gap solution has been the importation of bees to service fruit growers, like tiny migrant workers. However, this pasr week alone, 30,000 of these traveling pollinators were spilled in the overturning of a shipment on the highway trucking accident. This was only part of the rotating brigade. The stress of travel makes these bees ever more susceptible to disease and even death.According to a recent article in "House and Garden" magazine, some states have lost up to 70% of their colonies in some regions of the U.S. last winter." The impact on crops may be staggering. But these imported bees travel a circuit traversing in a growing season for a variety of fruits for example such as, apple and blueberry and, so on.
  
  Have any treatments provided positive change? What can be done to help?

  • Use other pollinators such as native bees, bats , birds and bumble bees
  • Encourage the rebirth of hedgerows and highway scrub growth and native plantings for nesting sites for wildlings.
    
  • Plant intermittent flowers that yield foodstuffs when crops are not in season
  • Reinforce gardens with plants attractive to bees ( get information on appropriate species at Website, nature: berkeley.edu/urbanbee. The Xerces Society, 4828 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, Oregon, 97215, 503-232-6639, Xerces.org. for more helpful suggestions. They also have a booklet: "Farming for Bees". Streamside, uerban and suburban gardening can supplement food sources.
  • Be bee-friendly: use no toxins and no lawn chemicals.
  • Practice successive gardening which will offer lots of tantalizing nutrition for these insects. CHeck your local garden centers for proper varieties for eacj season.
  • Plant enmass so that bees can "see" them.
  • Leave some exposed soil for ground nesting species.
  • Contact Pollination Partnership. pollinators.org.

  Urban bees love a balcony of potted flowers. They adore suburban gardens. Any patch of nectar, any flowering fruit tree can help sustain them and enriches the flavor of their honey. Whatever their chosen crop can be their flavor of choice, even just un-poisoned clover makes a very pleasing tasting honey. Hanging baskets and flower boxes as well, enhance their smorgasborg of delights. So dig out your almanacs, plants and seed catalogs, gloves and trowels. My personal balcony has already jumped into the season with faux flowers for a little while longer. Then, wham! out come the inside plants  which have stood sentinel by the big sliding glass doors all winter. They consist of a 60 year old rosebush, Sonja, the florists' favorite. It graced my parents' front dooryard. A 30 year old Ti plant that my sister sent from Hawaii to CynaraJane has to stay in the shade. That same sister gave me a Lantana bush which blooms year round, also pink like the rose. A fifty year old Sedum that had belonged to my husband's mother doesn't bloom until fall. Pink, of course. Then there is a twenty-five year old stand of violets from our old homestead.
  
  Then, after May 15th, we bring on the annuals. We have no more room for perrenials until we move into our dream home (we hope soon.) So already we are planning to do our part to nourish the bee. Today, I saw them building plastic greenhouses in the parking lots at the strip-mall. Bright and early next week we will start the spring shop for "color". Won't you make an extra effort to coddle the honey-makers this year? The planet you save may be your own!
  
  Happy Resurrection!!
  We love Him because He first loved us. John 4:19
  
  

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