Happy Pollinator Week!

To celebrate our local pollinators I made three cards you can take into the garden or your back yard to look for these garden super stars. You can ask us for a hard copy or download and print the pdfs below. As you walk through the garden, look for the colours and patterns on the BINGO card photos. Get a sense of the general shape of the insect.  Is it round and fuzzy, or slim-waisted and hairless? How many wings does it have? How are the eyes positioned on the face? Be curious. Ask questions. Take your own photos and compare them to the photos on the card when you get home. Try uploading the photos on iNaturalist to help scientists gather important data on pollinator health. Any photos of butterflies can be added to the Butterflies in my Backyard project created by the David Suzuki Foundation.

When we designed the Riley Park Community Garden, we made sure to create an infrastructure that would feed the insects and birds that help pollinate the food we grow. From the native salmonberries that bloom early in the spring for the queen bumblebees to the goldenrod and asters that bloom in late summer and early fall, we chose plants that provide nectar and pollen for our local bees, flies, beetles, wasps, and hummingbirds. Many food plants bloom only for a short period of two weeks, but many pollinators need food from early spring to fall. This means planting perennials, herbs, and shrubs that successively bloom for longer periods of time so there are no gaps in the foraging season. 

What are the hotspots to look for pollinators in late June? Search for fireweed, yarrow, catmint, snowberry and sage. You’re sure to find all sorts of pollinators slurping down the nectar and the female bees will be collecting pollen from these plants.

For more information on British Columbia's native bees, check out the website for the Native Bee Society of British Columbia.

The garden is also part of the Vancouver Butterflyway produced by the David Suzuki Foundation. For more info, check out the website.

 

Click the links below to download the pdfs. Have fun!

BINGO card #1

BINGO card #2

BINGO card #3

Falling for Bees: A Positive Pollinator Week Message

 Just when I think I can’t fall more deeply in love with bees, I am once again head-over-heels in lurve. I love the way bees always surprise me, challenge my body of knowledge, and magically connect us with flowers and people. As I’ve been promoting my book Victory Gardens for Bees: A DIY Guide to Saving the Bees across Western Canada, the bees have been working their magic, and I feel there are people who really get it and are going to act as leaders in their community to protect and support pollinators. So if you’re looking for some good news during pollinator week, please visit my blog posts below and follow the recent stories of the bees I love and the people who love them!

In some of the classrooms I visit, a child will fall in love with a specific type of species of bee. One boy was fascinated with the sweat bees and could not stop chattering with excitement about how he was going to befriend these gentle bees. Do you want to fall for a bee? Sometimes it helps to know how to “court” a relationship with a bee. Here’s some simple tips.

How to Court a Bee:

 1)  Find a spot near you that has a critical mass of blooming flowers where there is bee activity.  Choose a warm, sunny afternoon and “bee sun smart” at this time of the day. Wear a hat, sunglasses, and sunscreen.

2)   Challenge yourself to take the time to find the largest fuzziest bee you can see and the tiniest shiniest bee you can see.

 

3)   Find the “hotspot” in the patch of flowers where you see the most variety of bee species and sit awhile, counting how many kinds of bees you can see.

4)   Look for the furry part of the body where the bee collects its pollen.  Note the color or colors of pollen that the bee is collecting.

5)   Bring your camera—any kind will do—and try to snap multiple photos of one bee so you can look up close on your computer, zooming in on the bee for closer examination.

6)   Now go back to the same spot on another day and double your joy by bringing a friend. See if you can see if you can make a new set of observations and recognize some of the same bees you saw the first time. Share your observations and make a date to come back again and again . . . . The next thing you know, you’ll be falling in love with bees! 

Happy Pollinator Week! Do You Have Thyme for Bees?

I’ve just come from a tour of Western Canada promoting my book, Victory Gardens for Bees, and I’m happy to bring back some really good news. All across Canada people are committing to using the book as a “Canada food guide for bees” and boosting the bee forage in their neighborhood. I took back some valuable lessons learned from observing bees from Kelowna to Winnipeg.

1)   Bees and cats love catmint!

Purple catmint cultivars (i.e. Nepeta fassennii) are essential plants for bees. They are hardy and the flowers pump out the nectar bees need for the energy and they collect white pollen from the flowers to feed to their brood.  These perennial plants are an example of flowers in the mint family that do not spread too quickly, but provide important long-blooming resources for bees.

DIY tip: A trio of great bee plants is catnip, perennial sage (ie Salvia sylvestris ‘May Night’), and bee balm.

2) You can help provide a rosy future for bees.

Wild roses and hardy dog rose cultivars provide important sources of pollen for bees in May and June. All kinds of species swim around in the pollen in those wild and old-fashioned roses like the fragrant roses my grandmothers grew in their gardens in Saskatchewan. Edmonton is a city of roses, with bumblebees loading up on pollen from the beautiful deep fuchsia blossoms of the Assiniboine rose.

DIY Tip: A trio of great bee shrubs includes roses, raspberries, and potentilla.

3)   Thyme is a great alternative to grass.

The Devonian gardens outside Edmonton is an Alberta bee oasis, with carpets of flowering thyme covered with many species of bees. This drought tolerant ground cover is a great way to start removing some of the area on the edges of your lawn to gradually add in more forage for bees. Edging your perennial beds with different species of thyme is a good way to create “bee paths” through your garden.

DIY tip: Combine thyme with a low-growing sedum and wild strawberries for a fantastic edging trio. 

4)   Lawns need to shrink and flowerbeds need to grow.

Our love affair with turf needs to end. So much time, energy, water, and pesticides go into lawn-proud landscapes. We really need to replace that with our pride in flowerbeds. The Communities in Bloom program is a very good example of a positive movement towards planting more flowers for bees.

DIY Tip: Make a sign for your garden that says you’re growing organic blooms for bees.

5) Plant lupins for bumblebees! 

Research the native lupins for your area and give bumblebees a break by providing them with a flower that they love with plenty of brick red pollen for their brood.

6) We need pollinator protection legislation.

 In Saskatoon I met an exterminator who wants to provide ecologically friendly solutions to pest control. He has a family and loves nature and wants to do the least amount of harm possible. As mosquitoes, tent caterpillars and ticks invade the prairies, and European chafer beetles infest lawns in Great Vancouver consumers are told to use an arsenal of pesticides and herbicides including neonicatinoids which kill bees and other pollinators and accumulate in plants, soil, and water. Furthermore, since there are no laws regarding the labeling of plants that have been treated with neonics, people are in danger of buying plants to feed the bees that poison them instead.

We need to work together to come up with legislation that protects pollinators from the toxic pesticides that kill and poison bees, butterflies and other insects. We need to invest in research in Integrated Pest Management to come up with solutions

DIY Tip: Support businesses like Sage Garden Greenhouses in Winnipeg that proudly declare themselves neonic free. Many businesses selling your local native plants do not put pesticides on their stock. Choose bee-feeding native plants in the aster family such as blanket flower, prairie coneflower and coreopsis.

A Party to Celebrate National Pollinator Week!

 

 We celebrated Pollinator Week in style, with a fantastic group of students I've been working with this spring. Their teachers have been welcoming and enthusiastic, the kids have been warm and creative and fun. I feel so grateful for this opportunity to share my passion for gardening and celebrating bees with this group. And thanks to these kids and their teachers we have a new pollinator garden at Moberly and more bees than ever visiting the community garden this year.

Good News for Vancouver Bees: Saving the Arbutus Corridor

Let's focus on some good news for National Pollinator Week. Now that the City of Vancouver has purchased the Arbutus Corridor, countless bees and an important pollinator corridor have been saved.

The combination of cultivated gardens and weedy verges make up a healthy biodiversity of plants that support bees and good nesting sites for a wide range of native bees.

Many of these bees are smaller than honeybees and they do not sting.

These bees ensure the berries and fruit along the Arbutus corridor develop ripe, plump fruit.

They may not make honey, but working as a team they are actually more efficient pollinators than honeybees.

Bumblebees and honeybees can sting, but male bees like this one cannot sting. If you learn to tell the male bees from the female, you can pet them like a little cat.

This female bee is carrying at least two different kinds of pollen in her pollen baskets.

This native shrub, Douglas' Spirea is like cotton candy for bees. They scramble over it collecting pollen.

Thistles also attract bees of all stripes.

 These umbels made of tiny flowers attract the wee bees that tickle when they land on your skin.

This bee has bright yellow hairs that mimic the pollen it carries.

California poppies attract bumblebees, leafcutter bees, turquoise sweat bees, and more.

This bee's setae, or branched hairs are completely coated in orange pollen.

This flower in the aster family (Erigeron, I believe) was attracting bees of all stripes.

Flowers in the carrot family attract the tiniest of bees.

I'm thrilled to be one of the instructors this year in World in a Garden's Bee-Coming Leaders: A Bee School for kids. We'll be going on safaris to watch these native bees every day of the camp.

These kids will be able to mentor other kids who want to learn more about bees and the stewardship issues around creating healthy habitat for pollinators. Many thanks to the City of Vancouver for protecting this important site and let's make sure it is developed and enriched for pollinators for the future.