Denise's blog

Yup, I say pollen can be an amazingly interesting thing, not to mention stunningly gorgeous (and no, I have not been drinking).I finally got to read the February issue of National Geographic and the awesome article by Rob Dunn and Martin Oeggerli entitled Love is in the Air. Trust me on this - it is so interesting and the images from a scanning electron microscope of different grains of pollen are so beautiful, you won't be able to put it down! Check it out.

What a wild ride of a winter it's been on the east coast this year, but the snow is quickly melting, daytime temps are edging up towards 50F, and it'll be March in less than one week.  Soon it'll be time for our little native bees to start munching out of their cocoons, so now is the time to prepare for their arrival!  Here are some things I recommend:

I think it's pretty obvious that the main culprit is - drum roll - Chemicals!  Just their names sound evil:  chlorothalonil, mycobutanil, simazine, glyphosate, chlorpyrifos, to name just a few of those that are commonly found in beehives.  In the December, 2009 issue of Bee Culture Magazine (I love to read it, even though it's mostly about honey bees) the Editor, Kim Flottum, writes about the results of a U.

Finally made it back to the east coast world of snow, and I absolutely love it!  Who would've thought that I'd head to Montana and Yellowstone NP to get my winter snow fix, and end up having way more snow at home? 

Okay, I won't bore you with my trazillion photos from Yellowstone, but I do want to share a very unique and poetic definition of 'pollination' that I read in a book by the extraordinary person and Yellowstone photographer, Tom Murphy, in his book entitled The Light of Spring:  Seasons of Yellowstone -

Wow.  I'm thrilled [and relieved] to have the web site up and running, and to see (thank you, Google Analytics) that lots of folks are visiting.  Woo hoo!  I have years of amazing native bee info stored on my Mac, and I can't wait to share it.  I plan to add stuff frequently and, once the Orchard Mason Bees start nesting in March/April, I'll be taking lots more photos and videos that I'll be able to upload.  So make sure you keep checking back!

Hello everyone, and happy 2010!  Last fall I removed the bee cocoons from their paper straws liners so they could be cleaned and sorted.  I don't normally do that but our very wet spring resulted in some mold issues, so I wanted to be sure they were healthy. 

I recommend a starter colony of (20) bees for a house that has 30 - 40 nesting holes, since not all bees will survive to emerge.  I try to approximate the ratio that is found in nature, which is about 30% female and 70% male. 

I guess the first thing I should clarify is that Native Bees are NOT like Honey Bees! They don’t produce honey or build wax honeycomb; they don’t sting; they don’t live in colonies of up to 60,000, and they don’t survive over the winter.  Honey bees are social bees who all work together in a large hive to rear baby bees (brood). Native bees - like my personal fav, the Orchard Mason Bee – are solitary bees, which means that each female Mason Bee builds her own nest, lays her eggs, seals in the eggs and pollen, and then dies.

Probably shouldn’t start my new blog on a downer note, but I promise, the news gets better! I’m sure most of you have heard about the problems the honey bees are experiencing these days.  Parasites, diseases, over-work and pesticides are killing them by the millions, and we’ve all been frightened into believing that “1/3 of our food crops will disappear” if the honey bees can’t pollinate.  But guess what?  It’s not true!  There are more than 4,000 species of native North American solitary bees, and they successfully pollinated our continent for millions of years before the English colonists imported the European honey bee.

My first blog! I’m very excited about my new web site and can’t wait to start spreading the word about our fabulous little native bees. This blog will provide the perfect venue for that, and I hope to update it with interesting info every few days. Not everything I write will be about native bees, because I’m always finding interesting tidbits about our world that I’m anxious to share (my family and friends can attest.) So please send comments and questions, just so I know someone’s out there!