The mysterious decline of honeybees - the domesticized ones especially - is in the media for years. Parasites, neurotoxic pesticides, industrial agriculture, and development have decimated honeybee stocks tremendously. However, there are many other bees around to help pollinate crops and fruit trees - not only our well-known honey bees.
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Who Else Helps Pollinating?
Honey bees will only fly within a radius of 3 to 5 miles maximum to forage for food. Many other pollinating species remain unsung heroes of the environment, gardens, and countryside. Bumblebees, for example, are used to pollinate greenhouse tomatoes.
Some crops are solely pollinated by wild bees and other pollinators, and not by honey bees. Besides honey bees, there are 3,999 other bee species living in North America alone, in the UK, perhaps it is one of the other 250 species of bees.
Wild bees, such as mason bees, blue orchard bees, solitary bees, red mason bees, stingless bees, horn-faced bees, blueberry bees etc. are sometimes even better suited to pollinate than honey bees. Although they don't produce the "sweet stuff" that beekeepers are fond of.
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Mason bees, for example, are ten times more effective than honey bees! It only takes thirty mason bees to pollinate a standard apple tree - compared to three-hundred honey bees.
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You Don't Need to Become a Beekeeper
Domesticated honey bee colonies supplement the work of natural wild pollinators - not the other way around. In a study of 41 different crop systems worldwide, honeybees only increased yield in 14 percent of the crops. Who did all the pollination? Native bees and other insects! They are also early spring pollinators. Wild, native bees barely ever sting - contrary to honey bees.
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This is How You Can Help Wild Bees
No matter if you have only a balcony or small garden, if you planted fruit trees or berries on your acreage, or if you own large orchards: it's very easy to support pollinators. It's a very important process for our food chain. No pollinating means no food! Place one or several bee houses on the south side of your house, garage or garden shed building. As larger the overhang on the roof is, as better. This way, woodpeckers (who have a 4inch long tong) are not able to reach into the breeding tubes.
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This is one of the better bee houses as it has a roof overhang!
Avoid to hang it on a tree as their predators, such as ants, earwigs, and birds frequent the twigs. You can easily build your own house from a 4x4 piece of wood and two wood plates for the roof. Drill holes of about 7 mm in diameter. Instead of purchasing, turn pieces of toilet paper rolls (or colorful construction/handicraft paper) around a pen and place it tightly into the drilled holes. Never buy a bee house without roof overhang!
The female bee will fill the tubes with eggs, pollen, and nectar for food for their young. Every female is fertile and makes her own nest, and no worker bees for these species exist. When the female bee runs out of eggs, she will die.
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This beehouse is protected with chicken wire against birds and other predators
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The Lifecycle of the Young Bees
The first three stages — egg, larva, and pupa — take up the majority of the bee’s life. The adult stage may last only a few days (for males) and a few weeks (for females). Females typically nest in narrow gaps and naturally occurring tubular cavities, commonly this means hollow twigs. They do not excavate their own nests. The material used for the cell can be clay, mud, grit, or chewed plant tissue. A female might inspect several potential nests before settling in.
Once a provision mass is complete, the bee backs into the hole and lays an egg on top of the mass. Then, she creates a partition of "mud", which doubles as the back of the next cell. The process continues until she has filled the cavity or tube. Female eggs are laid in the back of the nest, and male eggs towards the front. Once a bee has finished with a nest, she plugs the entrance to the tube and then may seek out another nest location.
Within weeks of hatching, the larva has probably consumed all of its food and begins spinning a cocoon around itself and enters the pupal stage. The adult pupal matures in the fall or winter, hibernating inside its insulation cocoon, even if the temperature drops below 0°C for months, they are well-adapted to cold winters.
When the bees emerge from their cocoons, the males exit first. The males typically remain near the nests waiting for the females. When the females emerge, they mate with one or several males. The males soon die, and within a few days, the females begin to fill their nests.
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How You Can Support the Bees
If you are a small backyard gardener and you don't want to go into pollinator breeding, then just hang up your bee houses. Maybe change the location during the hottest summer weeks to the shade north side of your house. Early next spring, vice versa: back onto the Southern walls. You should only check if the tubes are still intact, and maybe have to replace one or the other. That's all. You have helped the native bee population to find safe nesting places and introduced the new ones to your garden. Congratulations!
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Breeding of Native Wild Bees
Owning lots of berries plants, or fruit trees or even an Orchard? Maybe even want to go into the breeding business in order to sell pollinators? Then you need more bees!
- Hang up a dozen bee houses, and fill those with tubes in very early spring
- In late June, check if most of the tubes are "occupied" (mud is clocking the tubes)
- Take out the tubes, store them in a tin box with several tiny holes for air circulation
- Store the box in a pretty cool, dry and safe spot
- In October, very carefully open the tubes to remove the cocoons
- Wash your cocoons in cool water, gently remove any dirt or mites
- Let them dry, and store again in a tin box with several tiny holes for air circulation
- Store the box in an even cooler (ca. 0 degrees), dry, safe spot til early spring - and then start over again with #1 - starting the next season.
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The main threat to the native bees is habitat loss. As native vegetation is replaced by exotic garden plants, large expanses of lawn and roadways, bees lose all the resources they need to survive — and to pollinate.
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More Resources About Native Bees:
https://www.buzzaboutbees.net/wild-bees.html
http://wildforbees.ca/
http://www.jrfarm.ca/mason-bees/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mason_bee
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