Snacking on Kale Blossoms

 I am happy to announce that Madame Beespeaker is diversifying her portfolio! This year I will be doing projects about hummingbird awareness and will be performing hummingbird interventions--growing plants that attract hummers to community gardens. The first planting day was this week with a class at Simon Fraser Elementary in their school plots at the Mount Pleasant Community Garden. While we planted scarlet runner beans and nasturtiums for the hummingbirds, we snacked on kale  and brussel sprout blossoms.

 

It was fun to see the look of surprise on the children's faces as they tasted a brassica flower for the first time. "It's really good! I didn't expect to like it, but it's better than broccoli! Can I have some more? What else can I eat? Can I eat this sunflower? I can't stop eating these kale flowers. I'm addicted!" The bees love them too, and we have been surrounded by bumble bees, honey bees and mason bees sipping nectar and collecting pollen as we garden. This project has been sponsored by a Vancouver Foundation Small Neighborhood Grant. Many Thanks!

 Today I tried to get some more folks hooked on kale blossoms at the community kitchen at the Moberly Community Arts Centre. Mohinder gave them a try for the first time. . . .

 The verdict? A very cheeky smile tells me she likes them too.

 We drank chai, ate kale blossoms and sweets and chatted about kale, scarlet runner beans and nasturtiums--a trifecta of healthy foods that are easy to grow in your garden. All three plants have beautiful edible flowers and the hummingbirds love the scarlet bean flowers and the nasturtiums as well. The ladies also wanted some perennials, so I bought them some Monarda didyma plants at the UBC Botanical Garden sale. I put some in the Moberly Herb Garden so we can make tea when the plants are established. Monarda is a trifecta pollinator plant. It is a food plant for some lepidoptera (including some that feed exclusively on Monarda species) as well as forage for bumble bees and hummingbirds. It is an atypical bee plant, in that it is red, which is a color bees see as black. Bumble bees also love scarlet runner beans, and they are also atypical bee plants. Scarlet runner beans, unlike common beans, need to be" tripped" by pollinators, even though they self pollinate.

 I gave tips on planting these hummingbird attractors and also taught them how to protect their garden from slugs, which was a big hit! This project is made possible by The Moberly Community Arts Centre. I look forward to more afternoons in the Moberly Community herb garden with these lovely ladies.

Jelly Belly Bees in Vancouver

 I perceive that we are in the middle of what beekeepers would call a high summer nectar flow. The honeybees are really ramping up their foraging and some late season native bees are also highly active. This is a tiny native bee in a thread leaf coreopsis flower at 9:45 am. It has a really big head in proportion to its body and I think it's scopa is located soley on the abdomen, making it a member of the megalachidae family. It was a very methodical bee, circling around from floret to floret sipping nectar, with a bit of wiggling up and down in the abdomen. I find that the megalachide tend to have very mobile abdomens, which makes sense as it is their means of gathering pollen. Megachilidae have been nicknamed "jelly belly" bees because of the bright patches of pollen on their bellies. In my little one foot diameter patch of coreopsis there were at least two of these bees.

You can see here her legs are quite thin-looking and not fluffy and coated with pollen as is the case with some small native bees. Her antennae are down and she is incredibly focused.

 I have been researching European wool carder bees, since they have moved in to my garden and monopolized the wooly lamb's ear plant (Stachys Byzantina). You can see it here in a dry, sunny spot behind my rhubarb.

 I watched the bees in the morning and when the plant was in the shade they hung out on the neighboring borage leaves to catch the sun, but as soon as the sun warmed the lamb's ear they were in like Flynn. Honey bees and bumble bees tend to go around and pollinate all the flowers on one plant but these carder bees would take a sip from one flower and then fly up over my roof and away. Males would hang out on the leaves and wait to defend their territory. They will bump other bees out of the flowers. Meanwhile the much smaller female bees were quietly rubbing the fur off the stems. You can see in this photo of the leaf patterns of fluff removal. You may even find this fluff in your mason bee condo.

The flowers of stachys are unassuming, but they are similar to this bee plant that's blooming now: dragonshead.

I noticed this lovely mass of creeping germander along a neighbor's sidewalk which has a similar morphology in the blossoms but lacks the fuzz on the foliage. I did see some wool carder bees in these plants too.

Here's another plant with purple flowers with bilateral symmetry of the about the same size as the stachys and germander: a sage I didn't save the name of. . . I bought it on a whim and the bumble bees and honey bees love it.

 After my daily bee-watching, I set off to the Kits Farmer's market in search of millet stems. I found some millet in this bouquet at Choices Market on 16th. It comes with a free honey bee!

This organic bouquet is from Bathtub Gardens in Pemberton which is the same flower stall that sells the millet stems at Kits Market! I rushed to the market, got there five minutes before it closed and bought some beautiful millet. Who did I happen to meet, but the lovely busy bee artist Holly Schmidt who was meeting with Alexander McNaughton to concoct their next tasting at the Burnaby Art Gallery as part of Holly's project: The Moveable Feast.

Why was I chasing down millet? Well, that's the story for my next blog post. Hint: It's to do with the current Earth Art Show at VanDusen Gardens.

UBC Farm Bee-Themed Market

 Today we celebrated the bees at UBC which play an integral part of its eco-system. Here is the Queen Bee with UBC Farm worker bees Rosalind Sadowski, Nicky Grunfeld and Molly Knox.

 This cute bee is The UBC Farm Communications Coordinator Anelyse Weiler, who gave tours of the farm highlighting the activities revolving around bees. Anelyse has created a project to plant more bee forage on the farm to feed the honeybees and the native bees.

 Anelyse talked about the Medicinal Garden which is actually managed by the Dept. of Botany at UBC. It is affectionately known as the "scratch and sniff" garden. She said that lavender is good for sunburn, so I put some on my face tonight to sooth the bits that got a bit baked this morning.

 We went through the children's garden where the hummingbirds were very vocal, attracted to the crocosmia and nasturtiums. Nicky Grunfeld helps young students in the Landed Learning Program learn about the importance of bees in our food system through hands on interactions with bees--I mean literally. One brave student put her hand on a swarm, saying that she felt the beating heart of the organism. Wow.

 This is the skep-shaped cob oven  where students bake bread they have made from flour they mill from grains grown on the farm.

 Beekeeper Bruce shows a visible hive to the fascinated viewers.

 This is a lovely sculpture of a Plasterer Bee by Toronto-based artist Charmaine Lurch. More of her bees are currently on display in the Lobby Gallery at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC.

 A lovely bee crafted by Holly.

 This is a display of homes you can make for native bees.

 Worker bees carrying eggs. (!?)

 Phacelia is one of the best plants for honey bees. Bumble bees love the crimson clover interplanted with the phacelia in this patch of bee forage.

It was such a boost to see so many people passionate about our bees: happy bee nerds, one and all!

The Bees in the World in a Garden

 I had a lovely time leading a workshop at The Passport to Permaculture Camp at World in a Garden. We talked about the biodiversity of bees, made bee habitats for native bees and left messages for the honeybees.

The kids wore gloves to handle the bamboo as it does tend to give slivers.

It's good to work in three dimensions to get the brain working creatively.

 This dude put his bee habitat on his hat. Hmmmm, he thinks the same way I do. Maybe he's a budding performance artist?

 I knew the beekeeper was coming in the afternoon to open the hive, so we made messages for the bees and I took the students a few at a time to get as close to the hive as they felt comfortable doing.

 We tried to pet a sleepy bumble bee and he crawled up on a girl's finger. The look on her face was delight mixed with surprise. And it didn't sting!

 It was a perfect day for honeybee activity.

 When the kids started snacking on raspberries and other things in the garden we decided it was snack break time. The kids generously shared their kale chips with me. They were delicious! The secret was they were covered in Little Creek salad dressing (my fave) and dehydrated. Wow.

 California poppies are perfect for spotting bumble bees.

 Doesn't this kohlrabi look delicious? You have a chance to buy food from the garden this Friday from 3-5 pm when the kids set up their own market stall.

I hope there's gonna be kale chips!

Unter Der Linden

If you've been noticing a heavy perfumed scent coming from some of the grand trees that line Vancouver streets, chances are you have wandered under a stand of linden trees. There are linden varieties native to Europe and America, and the tree is venerated in European countries, known as the tree of love and the tree of truth. Some trees have been known to grow for two thousand years. The wood can be used for sculpture and the blossoms are medicinal. Linden blossom tea is used to treat colds and flu and to lower blood pressure. It should be used with caution, especially for those with heart conditions. Linden is also soporific, so adding an infusion to your bath water will help you sleep. Perhaps this is where it gets the reputation for making bees "drunk" on its nectar. Most varieties of linden are treasured nectar plants, however one variety, the silver linden, Tilia Tomentosa, is toxic to bees.

It is not surprising essential oils of linden are used in the perfume industry. On hot muggy days I find the scent overwhelming. It is so strong that it actually masks traffic odors, which is a good thing! I am surprised we don't celebrate our linden trees in Vancouver. In fact, many people hate the trees because they attract aphids which produce honey dew. This sweet substance drips down on cars, making them sticky. I offer my deepest sympathies for this minor inconvenience. I noticed that in Coquitlam, there is an annual linden tea party held by the Riverview Horticultural Society. Maybe we need to start up a similar tradition here! If you want to experience the linden tree rapture, find the corner on the west side of Main and 21st in front of Liberty Bakery and across from Shaktea. Inhale and enjoy.

New Bee Habitat Workshop

One of my favorite gigs is working with the Creative Remix Summer Camp at The Moberly Arts and Cultural Centre. This year we created bee habitat scuptures for the kids to take home and put on their balcony or garden. This is a brand new workshop!

It's such a great time of the year to work with the herb garden, which has been filling in nicely.

Rules to live by: No negative language!

It was pajama day--thus the pjs and slippers.

The bee experts say you can help native bees by leaving out bundles of hollow stems and twigs. I thought we'd experiment using bamboo at various angles to see which orientation the bees prefer. After all, stems naturally grow vertically.

We also explored the structure of flowers, looking closely at how the bees reach the pollen and nectar in different herbs.

I like to get the students to explore the herbs with all their senses and draw the details in the leaves, stems, and flowers.

 

 

Turns out honey bees love butterfly bushes too! The nectaries must be full enough that this girl can reach it the liquid using her tongue's capillary action.