Wild Bees are Delightful - Series 5 Article 2 - Honeybees
By Bonnie McNamee
Image by Charles Kazilek
Did you know that the honey bee is New Jersey’s
official state insect? Apis is Latin for “bee” and mellifera is Latin for
“honey bearing”.
To attract honey bees and others to your garden, plant
flowers native to your area. Bees like flowers with single petals (it’s harder
for bees to get into double blossoms) in yellow, white, blue and purple. These
colors attract bees more than pinks, oranges and reds do.
Honey bees help your garden grow beautiful. Having
bees bussing around to act as pollinators brings life to the garden and makes
flowers and other plants lush and abundant.
Let your lawn grow a little wild, and provide water and shelter for
bees.
Plant native – the more wild flowers you plant, the
more bees you’ll attract, and the better your garden will grow. There are many plants available such as
purple coneflower, cornflower, coreopsis, foxglove, clover, cosmos, dahlias,
hollyhocks, sunflower, poppy, Black-eyed Susan, aster, azalea, rhododendron,
bee balm, goldenrod, hawthorn, lobelia, lupine, milkweed, wild indigo, mountain
mist, hyssop, turtlehead, wild geranium and zinnias.
Bees are vegetarian in both the adult and larval
stages. Bees gather nectar from flowers as a source of carbohydrates, as do
many wasps. Their protein needs are filled by pollen collection. Most species
of bees are valuable pollinators, and honey bees in particular are an essential
partner in the production of food crops for humans.
According to an educational brochure written by Bill
Coniglio and Landi Simone, members of the New Jersey Beekeepers Association,
the majority of honey bees in the US exist as managed colonies, living in wooden
boxes called hives, which can be transported for crop pollination and from
which honey can be harvested without harming the bees. Honey bees are essential
to our system of agriculture. The California almond crop alone requires over
1.5 million colonies of bees for pollination, and New Jersey crops of
blueberries and cranberries, are of vital importance to New Jersey agriculture
also rely on honey bee pollination. Most fruit and nut crops, as well as many
legumes (such as soy beans) either require or are enhanced by honey bee
pollination. The honey bee is under siege by a variety of pests and diseases
and colony numbers have decreased significantly in the past two decades. In New Jersey honey bees are protected; it is
illegal to kill them.
The honey bee is about one-half inch long with a black
and amber body covered by hair. Not native to the US, the most common honey
bees are the Italian honey bees which have been bred for gentleness over the
course of millennia and are not usually defensive unless actively attacked.
Honey bees can only sting once and then they die.
Honey bees collect nectar and pollen for food. They make honey from the nectar,
which they store as food for the winter.
Unlike wasps, most individuals in the colony will live through the
winter.
Honey bee colonies live above ground in man-made bee
hives or hollow trees. When the hive or
nest becomes too crowded, half of the bees will fly off in search of a new
home. This is called swarming. The bees look for a protected above-ground
cavity of the right size. Occasionally
they will make a nest in a human structure.
According to Purdue University honeybees pick up a
host of agricultural, urban pesticides via non-crop plants. Not only are
agricultural chemicals a problem, homeowners and urban landscapes are big
contributors, even when hives are directly adjacent to crop fields. Researcher Elizabeth
Long was “surprised and concerned” by the diversity of pesticides found in
pollen. “If you care about bees as a
homeowner, only use insecticides when you really need to because bees will come
into contact with them” she said.
This is the second in a four part series on bees. Please return next week for Part III – Bumblebees.
