Bee Garden Blitz at Jerry's Garden in North Vancouver

Maybe the weekend before Halloween should be declared the official bee garden planting time of the year.  In Vancouver it's good to get some of the larger perennials moved and new trees and bushes in the ground before the rains some. This gives some plants a chance to establish themselves with a good supply of rainwater before the summer dry period comes next year. When I saw this poster at the Homesteader Emporium I was really excited to take part in this project and meet the BeeFriendly folks in North Vancouver.

It wasn't too difficult to get to the garden using public transit. You can catch the number 240 bus to North Vancouver across from the City Center sky train station which takes you within twenty minutes of Loutet Farm. The farm is a collaboration among the North Shore Neighborhood House, The City of North Vancouver and UBC Farm. The community partners transformed a strip of land that borders a soccer field in Loutet Park and turned it into a micro farm that sells vegetables to the local community at Wednesday and Saturday markets. The farm houses two beehives in sturdy bear-proof cages and is bordered by a busy path used by dog-walkers, joggers, and horsey folk.

On the other side of that public path is a gem of a garden named after its gentle gardener, Jerry MacPherson. I am early for the work party, but Jerry is already busy working in the garden. He is a quietly spoken sweet soul, and he's very excited about what we'll be doing in the garden. There is a diversity of plants packed into a small space and within five minutes of visiting the garden a male Anna's hummingbird lands on a branch in front of me to check out the interloper in what he clearly considers as his space.

 

There are quite a few hummingbird plants in this garden, some of which are still blooming: honeysuckle, crocosmia, monarda hardy fuschia and Lobelia cardinalis. Other plants include Agastache foeniculum, lavender, thyme, oregano, Persicaria amplexicaulis (red bistort), and Persicaria bistorta, (pudding dock). There are hazelnut bushes, Japanese anenomes, ox-eye daisies, hydrangeas and rose bushes cranesbill geranium, day lilies, iris, and more.

Over thirty volunteers arrive to help out in the garden including a gardener from as far away as Hornby Island. There are community gardeners from North Vancouver and employers and employees from The Great Canadian Landscaping Company which is one of the proud sponsors of this project.

We start by cleaning up the south side of the garden and prepare the ground to receive new soil. Everyone just mucks in a finds a job that suits their ability and energy level. "It's like the ground is moving!" Jerry exclaims as we dig and clip and cart wheelbarrows of green waste into the compost pile. The volunteers accomplish what could have been 6 weeks worth of work in the course of a few hours.

One of the young student helping us out finds this little garter snake we have flushed out from his hibernating spot. "He's so small I thought he was a worm," he says.

During the delicious lunch provided by whole Foods, a honeybee tries to steal back some of her precious honey. She is determined to clean every speck of it off the outside of this jar.

Jerry is a tireless worker. I didn't see him sit down once, not even for lunch.

We also uncover a queen Vosnesenskii. "We're almost done the hotel, and then you'll have a new place to stay," one volunteer says.

The attic of the hotel will be filled with the kind of soft insulation that bumble bees need for their nests. Although primarily ground nesters, using abandoned rodent nests, they occasionally snuggle in to bird houses and insulation in (human) houses.

Ric has package up several seeds from Gerry's garden which we are invited to choose from to plant in  our own gardens. The seeds Ric collected in the Gerry's Garden are Joe Pye weed, Jacob's ladder, lupin, Crocosmia, corn poppies, Delphinium, Monarda didyma, wooly lamb's ear, and foxglove. I picked up some Monarda didyma seeds because it supports bees and hummingbirds and makes delicious tea. People walking the path are drawn in by Ric's bee demo table. They get really excited about the bee garden seeds and the insect hotel.

After lunch Ric from BeeFriendly gives an excellent talk on native bees. A former construction worker, he has taken up the cause of protecting and supporting native bees, along with the frogs and snakes he remembers from his childhood. He warns us not to purchase mason bee cocoons because they can be infested with pollen mites. It's better to find cocoons from a local mason beekeeper. He talks about the tragic loss of the Western Bumble bee due to the importation of disease-ridden non-native bumblebees by the greenhouse industry. He also talked about the importance of lupins as an early source of nectar and pollen for the queen bee to raise her first batch of brood in the spring.

The piece de resistance is this sturdy insect hotel which is placed on the site and anchored in concrete. It will be filled with bark, straw and other plant stems, as well as logs drilled with holes of varying diameters for a wide range of bees and beneficial wasps. There's a snake habitat under the insect hotel. As long as it's not a spider hotel, one gardener says. I am freaked out by the brown recluse spider. They do nasty things to your skin. (Maybe he should read this post by BugEric.)

Many thanks to our fearless and BeeFriendly leaders: Joseph, Sharon and Ric.

Fall Floral Competition: The Beenado

Three honeybees with strikingly different abdomens

  It's a quiet warm Sunday afternoon in September. A golden light reveals a black shadow on my neighbour's buddleia--a large Mourning Cloak butterfly opens its wings as it silently sips nectar. All is quiet on the southwestern front. And then all hell lets loose as two hummingbirds declare war on each other. They take turns flying straight up to gain the visual advantage, their high pitched squeaks warning each other until their beaks clash in a mid-air sword battle. Suddenly there's a third hummingbird involved, claiming a good vantage point watch the action from our lilac bush. The sparrows and chickadees hide in the shadows. And then just as quickly as it started, the fight has ended, or perhaps moved on to another yard where the sun is still warming the desired nectar.

 

While we are celebrating an early harvest moon, floral resources are also dwindling about 2 weeks ahead of schedule. What does this mean to the bees? Competition for nectar and pollen is heating up. At a time of the year when country gardeners are entering competitions for best peach pie, longest zucchini, and the top annual floral display, bees are competing for the best flowers to feed them and save their lives. The French baker at the UBC Farm market apologizes for covering up his goods. "It's because of the bees" he says. "Pas les abeilles," I say emphatically. "Ce sont les autres, les guepes." I ask him how to pronounce it. It's gep, rhymes-with-skep. "Masculin ou feminin?" I ask. "C'est une guepe," he says. Oh la la, the women always get the blame. Wasps are furiously searching for food to feed themselves and their young before winter comes and kills them all. . . except for the queen of course. There are some distinct advantages to being female.

A bee in every dahlia, this one with a plump pollen load

 

In the rows of flowers grown for bouquets their is a fierce competition going on in the dahlias. The bee-friendly dahlias that have yellow flat centres containing pollen and nectar are sites of frenzied activity with honeybees and bumble bees, each a miniature boxing ring with the biggest and strongest bees pushing the smaller ones outside the ropes. Bumble bees can wake up earlier and forage later, but honeybees have the advantage of sheer numbers. Besides, honeybees have a beekeeper who can feed them pollen patties and sugar water if they run out of foraged food, but these native bumble bees don't have that advantage, which is probably just as well. With so many honeybees sucking up resources I wonder how much is left for the bumble bees in this situation? How often can the dahlias replenish their supply?

 

It's important to mention that any double dahlias bred so that they cannot offer nectar or pollen are silent. occasionally I find a bee butt sticking out of the petticoats of double dahlias, but they are wasting precious time and energy. You are not doing bees any favours by planting these flowers. The flowers offering pollen come in just as many eye-popping colours as the double duds.

There is also a lot of hymenoptera helicopters hovering over the Ammi (I think it's bishop's lace). These umbels are crawling with patrolling wasps and syrphid flies of various sizes. I could stand and take photos here that would create an amazing stop-animation scenes in a battle. The real B-movie. Another kind of beenado is happening over the garlic chives at 16 Oaks organic Community Garden. A vosnesenskii queen and one of her brood work side by side on the umbels of one plant. While other flowers in the garden lay empty and still, these garlic chives are bristling with dramatic tension. Similar battles are going on in the oregano and those good old brassicas. A flowering broccoli plant provides an important source of fall nectar in the city.

On looking at these photographs I note that in spite of the intense competition going on there also seems to be a higher tolerance for the close proximity of other insects feeding at the same plant.

No pollen? I'm outta here!

 

In his book Bumblebees; their behaviour, ecology and conservation (2010, Oxford University Press) David Goulson asks the question: how did the introduction of honeybees half a century ago affect the native bee population in North America? Were there native bees who could not compete with the honeybees and ended up becoming extinct? I could see that happening to an oligolectic* bee, especially one that needed crucial late summer forage. We won't know if bees were lost, but we can study the bees we have now. Native bees need our support.

Fall is certainly a time when one needs to be conscious of the political nature of which plants you choose for which bees: native goldenrods and and asters need to be there in a critical mass for native bees. Abundant fall forage for honeybees means that they won't have to compete so much with native bees: garlic chives, oregano, perovskia, asters, helenium, nepeta, bee-friendly dahlias, false dandelion, sunflowers, sedum and any umbels that bloom late are essential. Also, we need to think about putting a cap on how many hives we allow per city block so that we do not stress our native urban bees to the point of extinction. I know some folks might find this hard to hear, but it's just common sense. There's only so much food at the pollinator buffet, especially as the days get shorter, floral choices narrow, and the volume of forage goes down. And soon, the rains will come.

A spider in the perovskia has a multi-course meal

 

*Oligolectic bees evolved to have a narrow choice of forage plants, ie from one genus or species.