Gardens
With a Buzz
Homeowners
Brave Stings
To Attract Beleaguered Bees;
The Lemonade Incident
By JUNE
FLETCHER
July 13, 2007; Page W8
Here
is the latest buzz in eco-heroism: bee gardens.
Amid
reports about the widespread decline of the honeybee population, increasing numbers
of homeowners are braving stings and sometimes alarming neighbors by turning their
yards into bee-friendly habitats. Some are shunning pesticides, planting flowers
that bees like, and even creating nesting sites for the beleaguered insects.
European
honeybees, major crop pollinators that were imported to this country almost four
centuries ago, have been dying off in huge numbers from mysterious causes (everything
from parasitic mites to cell phones have been implicated in their decline). Now,
the garden industry is pushing homeowners to create bee gardens that will attract
and nourish them as well as other, indigenous species.
The
latest campaigns emphasize insects over aesthetics. Most promote native plants,
which often have smaller and less showy blooms than cultivated hybrids but more
of the nectar and pollen that attract honeybees. Suppliers are also pitching products
that can provide shelter for some of the 4,000 native species, such as orchard
and leaf-cutter bees, that experts say could take up the slack should their European
cousins continue to disappear.
Such
efforts have a direct connection to America's dinner tables. One-third of the
food eaten in this country is pollinated by insects, according to the Department
of Agriculture, and the honeybee is responsible for 80% of that pollination, without
which plants won't bear fruits, seeds, vegetables or nuts. The honeybee is the
country's foremost crop pollinator, says Troy Fore, executive director of the
American Beekeeper Federation. But if native bee populations are robust, Mr. Fore
says, "we won't starve."
Crazy
Preoccupation
After
reading about the distressed honeybees, Janet Allen decided to give up pesticides
last summer and turn her 14,400-square-foot yard in Syracuse, N.Y., into an insect
habitat. The retired software engineer filled her front yard with beds of colorful
plants favored by honeybees, such as milkweed, penstemon and goldenrod (she bought
unusual varieties so neighbors wouldn't recognize them as roadside weeds). She
also put in half-a-dozen "bee boxes" that she bought online for about
$30 a piece. The boxes attract some native species that, unlike hive-dwelling
honeybees, prefer to go it alone, nesting in individual burrows in logs or holes
in the soil. Her husband, a lawyer, built two more this spring from scratch, using
scrap lumber and elderberry bush stems.
The
couple's two adult children think this preoccupation with bees -- the yard now
attracts dozens of the furry pollinators -- is "crazy," but Ms. Allen
considers it a higher calling: "It's part of our responsibility as parents
to leave a living planet."
While
it's unclear what, if anything, backyard bee gardens will be able to do to stop
the decline of the honeybee, there's no question that the insect is in trouble.
Though periodic die-offs have occurred before, most recently in the '80s, the
current bee decline, which started about five years ago, took a turn for the worse
last fall. According to the Apiary Inspectors of America, about a quarter of the
2.4 million commercial hives have been lost since then.
No
one tracks the number of bee gardens in the U.S., and they aren't being promoted
in big-box stores like Lowe's and Home Depot. But the home and garden firms that
do sell bee-related products report that sales are sweet. Smith & Hawken,
in Novato, Calif., says sales are strong for bee plants that it markets online
such as Spanish lavender and an echinacea called "Fatal Attraction";
a buddleia called "Honeycomb" is sold out.
Another
major retailer, Dutch Gardens, a division of Gardener's Supply in Burlington,
Vt., recently published a "pollinator primer" on its Web site that explains
the preferences of various types of bees, with links to popular plants it sells
such as "Fireball" monarda and hardy gloxinia; sales of such plants
are up 30% over last year, the company says. Raintree Nursery in Morton, Wash.,
says year-over-year sales of its "bee blocks" -- wooden blocks seeded
with the young of mason bees that can be placed in flowerbeds -- are up 25%. And
Windowbox.com, a Vernon, Calif., retailer, says sales of its $25 "bird, bee
and butterfly garden" have doubled this year over last, while sales of bee
and wasp traps have dropped 70%.
It
takes a certain amount of nerve -- and a leap of faith -- for even the most ecologically
committed gardeners to get over their fear of bees, despite the fact that native
species are largely nonaggressive and have mild stings. Honeybees, also mild-mannered,
do attack if they're swatted or stepped on, causing anything from a painful red
bump to a deadly reaction in allergic individuals.
So
it was with some trepidation that Jennifer O'Donovan bought a bee garden from
Windowbox.com earlier this spring. Her 5-year-old daughter, Megan, had become
fascinated with some docile honeybees she'd seen at a nearby pond, and her mother
wanted to encourage her to help the environment. When it came time to plant the
flower seeds, the Mendon, Mass., homemaker picked a tiny plot as far away from
her children's play set as she could. Now she and her daughter watch the dozen
or so bees that have started to frequent the flowers, but from a safe distance.
"I know bees are important," says Ms. O'Donovan, "but I also know
what they can do."
So
does Abbey Duke, a catering-company owner who recently created a bee garden in
her Burlington, Vt., yard filled with flowering herbs interspersed with old logs
into which she drilled holes for nests. Earlier this summer, however, she was
a bit horrified when, at a barbecue, the host -- a fellow bee-gardener -- accidentally
drank one of the insects after it landed on his glass of lemonade and stung his
tongue. He spent the rest of the party moaning in pain and sucking on an ice cube.
Still, Ms. Duke has no plans to give up her own backyard apiary, which she considers
important to the environment. "I'm hard to scare," she says.
'Broad
Floral Generalists'
Utah
State University bee biologist Jim Cane says that while some bees have specialized
food and nesting needs, others are "broad floral generalists," not particularly
fussy about what they eat or where they live. Bees can sustain themselves for
a long time on the robust flowering weeds commonly found on small vacant city
lots, for example.
In
fact, many types of bees prefer the small, single blossoms of weeds and wildflowers
to the huge double blooms of hybrids, such as tea roses or carnations, which are
bred to produce extra petals rather than nectar and pollen. Realizing this, Jan
Josifek, a weaver, has allowed invasive and gangly plants that she doesn't really
like, like fleabane, goldenrod and bellflower, to flourish in her three St. Paul,
Minn., flowerbeds. The plants are full of bees all season, but at a price: She
must give up space she'd rather use for showier flowers and spends tedious hours
"deadheading," or removing the wildflowers' spent blossoms, after the
bees have fertilized them. "If I didn't, the plants would make millions of
seeds and take over my yard," she says.
Some
entomologists are so convinced of the importance of creating backyard habitats
that they're planting bee gardens in their own yards. Noticing that the gardens
in his neighborhood are mostly filled with hybrid flowers, Lansing, Mich., entomologist
Rufus Isaacs has planted native perennials and berries that attract hordes of
bees -- as well as nervous neighbors. "The bees are too busy eating to worry
about humans as long as you watch and don't bother them," Mr. Isaacs says.
Tucson,
Ariz., entomologist Justin O. Schmidt, whose legendary "sting pain index"
is derived from his observations of being personally stung by more than 78 species
and 41 genera of venomous insects, is similarly blasé. He recently added
a black light to his yard to draw bees to plantings of milkweed, desert broom
and butterfly bush. Two weeks ago, his 9-year-old son went out to look at the
light and was stung on his bare foot by a honeybee. "My son was squawking,
but I used it as a teachable moment," says Mr. Schmidt, who calmly told his
son that if he'd been wearing shoes, he would have avoided the incident.
Beekeepers
have reported that entire colonies of honeybees -- an average commercial hive
holds 50,000 bees -- let loose in fields to help with crop pollination have failed
to return to their nests, and studies of stray dead bees found on the ground have
shown them riddled with a combination of viruses, bacteria and fungi. The exact
cause of the bee problem, dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder, is a mystery, says
Mr. Fore, of the beekeeper federation. Various theories have been raised, including
overuse of pesticides, mite infestation, and even wireless or cellphone use (the
signals purportedly confuse the bees' ability to return to the hives).
Susan
Moser, a Morton, Wash., organic farmer, recently decided to turn her front lawn
into a clover-filled meadow to attract wild bees, and she says she looks the other
way when they drill holes into her front porch. Two decades ago, she kept a few
honeybee hives around, but quit after a few years because it was too much trouble
to keep the sticky boxes clean. Giving up a patch of lawn and allowing bees to
live, literally, in her house is a lot easier -- and seems like a small sacrifice
for the besieged creatures that pollinate her apple trees, raspberry bushes and
other plants.
"It's
stressful to be a bee," she says.
