Messages for the Bees in the Dunbar Community Centre

This garden in Kitsilano, is full of great alliums for bees, including this Sicilian honey garlic. Bravo!

This hawthorn with double pink blossoms is a pink flamingo--I don't think it does anything for bees, which is a shame, because the single hawthorn varieties are one of the best trees for bees.

And here it is: the beautiful Working Holiday Coffee Bar.

Thanks to all the folks who left messages for the bees.

Marriage, birth or burying,

News across the seas,

All your sad or merrying

You must tell the bees.

The horse chestnuts also have a pink variety, but unlike the pink hawthorn it still seems to have the parts to produce nectar and pollen to feed the bees.

Join Me at the Dunbar Community Centre Saturday May 7, 11 am to 1 pm with the Working Holiday Project

Please come on down to the Dunbar Community Centre and make messages and seed packets to take home for the bees from 11 am to 1 pm. This event is a Working Holiday Coffee Bar hosted by The Working Holiday Project. Check out some of the cool things they've been doing.

BTW, did you know your coffee may be pollinated by killer bees?

An Urgent Message: Lawn Pesticides Kill Bees!

This is an issue that makes me so emotional, I can hardly restrain myself to write coherently about it, which is why I am going to refer you to an article on the subject on the Xerces Foundation website.
Please read this article and avoid the pesticides on the list AT ALL COSTS. These pesticides accumulate in plants for up to six years and also build up in the soil. When people use them on lawns to kill European chafer beetle larvae they kill non-stinging ground nesting bees. Please spread the word. Make signs. Raise hell! Send your protest photos to me: beespeaker(at)gmail(dot)com.

Please read this article: Are Neonicatinoids Killing Bees?

And that's a Wrap!: Pollinator Mural at Sexsmith Elementary

We are now finished our ArtStarts residency at Sexsmith. We had a great time and really enjoyed the creative students. We have lots of great memories and all these incredible pieces of art!

The grade six class helped build the pollinator hotel designed by Evan Hutchinson  and drew these beautiful zen doodles.

The grade fours made fabulous pollinator pillows or stuffies.

Many students learned to sew for the first time.

Heather Talbot and I created a mural so that the whole school could see how the creativity blossomed.

Another grade 6 class made these collages and botanical drawings.

 The grade twos imagined what a pollinator hotel might look like.

On Earth Day, students from all classes made thank you notes to the bees.

 The kindergarten class planted wildflower seeds for the bees and the grade four class planted sunflowers for the bees.

And voila! The fantastic new pollinator hotel stands next to the school garden.

A baby lupin appears in a garden  bed. Please transplant into the hillside garden!

And here are the other lupins which will soon bloom and feed the bees.

A big thanks to everyone who took part in the project and a special thanks to Cheryl who was the creative force behind the project and the green team and many amazing projects. Happy retirement to you!

Hey Bee-Huggin' Foodies: Join Me for a Fabulous Feast at the Rocky Mountain Flatbread Company on Main Street

I am such a big fan of The Rocky Mountain Flatbread Company and so I'm excited to invite you to a special long table dinner where I can chat to you about my favorite subjects: bees, gardening for bees, and using bee-friendly edible flowers in your kitchen.

The menu sounds fabulous and ten per cent of the money raised from the dinner goes to fund their Earth Bites program, working with kids in gardens. Follow the link here for details.  Register now because it's happening  this Tuesday!!!!

Spring Meadow at Mountainview Cemetery

Jasna and I visited the meadows at Mountainvew cemetery. This scruffy patch is a perfect site for little ground nesting bees. I actually find this bare soil very pleasing as a break from the normalized lawns. There's some interesting plants and rocks here.

We alse say many of these bee flies, which parasitize ground-nesting bees. They are strangely aggressive. We saw one give a roller derby side check to a little mason bee.

The meadow is blooming with flax and baby blue eyes and there are little blue flowers in one of the mossy lawns. This little one is a kind of Veronica, or Speedwell.

This is not micro clover, but black medic, an introduced weed that does have tiny flowers that feed bees.

After visiting the cemetery I sought sanctuary in the back yard, where a couple of columbines have appeared this year, as if by magic. I am so pleased! This one has medium-sized corollas. Now I am inspired to save the seeds and use them for some guerilla gardening.

The sweet cicely flowers are full of tiny ants.

Meanwhile, in my neighbor Catherine's yard, the roses are blooming and host the newly hatched velvety Andrena mining bees. They are also visiting the black raspberry flowers and forget-me nots in our back yard. Since I pulled up out back lawn, all sorts of ground-nesting bees have moved in.