Celebrate Pollinator Week With Us!

I'll be with my fellow bee nerds this weekend at a couple of events. Please join us and ask any bee gardening questions.

Celebrate Pollinator Week at South Hill Library Branch! Meet a trio of bee-huggers who can help you help the pollinators in your neighbourhood.

Erin Udal from the Environmental Youth Alliance will show you some of the bees she's collected in Vancouver. (Spoiler alert, they can't sting you.)

Brian Campbell, a Master Beekeeper, Master Gardener and servant to bees of all stripes will answer all your beekeeping and bee gardening questions.

Lori Weidenhammer, an artist/bee gardener will be the Seed Librarian in residence, "lending" seeds you can grow to feed the bees.

If it's not raining we'll be outside the front entrance to the library, but if it's wet, we'll take cover inside the library.


We'll be giving away free seeds while supplies last.

When: Saturday June 20, from 11 am to 1 pm.



 Main Street Car Free Day is this Sunday!!!!!!!!

Join Brian Campbell and Madame Beespeaker at the Little Mountain Neighborhood House from 1-3 pm to learn about hosting bumblebees in your garden. Find out about plans for a new community garden in Riley Park.

I'm Voting for the Pollinator Party!

Just joking! Save the date for this fabulous event. I'll be giving bee safari tours.

Happy Pollinator Week!: Campanula Season

Yesterday was a rainy day, with more than a one or two millimeter tease of precipitation. I am relieved that the gardens I help maintain will get a good drink. I was quite miserable yesterday, picking flowers in the rain for my son's grade seven grad with a splitting headache. Rain like this means honeybees have to stay inside. It was even too wet for bumble bees-- I saw one hunkering down under my lovage umbrels/umbrellas.

Too much rain will mean a dearth of pollen and nectar for honeybees, so they depend on a certain percentage of warm sunny days. If a summer honeybee only lives six weeks, one week of rain is a large percentage of their life. I would think that inside the hive, their lives would be busy, but not as risky or taxing as foraging. In this photo, you can see a honeybee foraging in the ground-cover type of campanula. She doesn't appear to be getting much pollen, but her abdomen looks distended with nectar.

Please check out Bug Girl's Pollinator Week post. She has some good reading recommendations and links to free downloads and e-books.