Building a Sustainable Future - One Flower at a Time - National Honey Bee Day

August 20, 2011 is a day to appreciate your honey - and the bees that produce it. It is National Honey Bee Day!

Protecting honey bees is another important reason to eliminate chemicals from your landscape. National Honey Bee Day will help you to understand why.

National Honey Bee Day was started by grassroots minded beekeepers to build community awareness of the bee industry, through education and promotion.  

The primary goals of the National Honey Bee Day Program include:  
1) Promotion and advancement of beekeeping.  
2) Educate the public about honey bees and beekeeping.  
3) Make the public aware of environmental concerns as they effect honey bees.

I've often mentioned the importance of pollinators and the dangers they face because of chemicals that some gardeners use in their gardens (among other things). The National Honey Bee Day website states:

We ask that every beekeeper join in this cause. We ask that backyard gardeners, those who love nature, environmental groups, and folks from every corner of society get involved and support saving the honey bee.

It's just not the honey bee in peril. Bats, butterflies, frogs, and other native pollinators are all being killed off through the increased use of chemicals and new lethal pesticides, herbicide, and fungicides on the market. The honey bee industry has suffered several years now with staggering losses due to "Colony Collapse Disorder". Yet to date, not one chemical has been banned or one farming practice changed. But the losses continue to mount year after year. 

There will be several National Honey Bee Day events in the area.

National Honey Bee Day at Sky Meadows State Park - 8/20/2011 - 11am - 4pm

Honey Bee Festival - Norfolk Botanic Gardens - 8/20/2100 - 10am - ?

But if you can't attend either one, I encourage you to visit the National Honey Bee Day website to learn more about the dangers facing honey bees - and the many reasons we need them!

For more information about bees, and other pollinators, visit:

Enjoying the Birds & Bees in Your Own Back Yard - Gardening to Attract Pollinators

10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Honey Bees

First Rooftop Garden Built for Bees

Enjoying the Birds and the Bees in Your Own Backyard - Attracting Pollinators

What do flowers, fine chocolates and flavorful coffee have to do with the birds and the bees?

Both chocolate and coffee are two of the 1000+ plants that depend on visits from the birds and the bees, and other pollinators, to help spread the love, or in their case, pollen, from flower to flower. In fact, it is estimated that about 90% of all flowering plants rely on animal pollination (as opposed to wind pollination) and over 200,000 species of animals participate in the pollinating. Without pollinators, many plants would never produce fruit or set seed and many of the foods we eat would no longer be available. As if a world lacking chocolate and coffee wouldn’t be bad enough, wild creatures that rely on pollinated plants for food and shelter could also disappear.

Like so many other species, some pollinators are showing steady population declines. Although the declines in honeybee populations are mainly due to diseases, declines in wild pollinator populations are attributed to habitat loss, competition from invasive species and exposure to pesticides.

Fortunately, we can do our part to correct the problem by inviting the birds and the bees to our own backyards. Simply choosing the right plants and eliminating chemicals in our landscapes will invite more pollinators, which in turn will bring more flowers, more fruit and a new level of enjoyment to a garden filled with colorful, winged wonders.

The most popular pollinators are already some of our favorite garden visitors – butterflies and hummingbirds. Other pollinators include beetles, bees, ants, wasps, moths and even small mammals.

So how do we attract these pollinators? Plant what they love!

To attract more pollinators to your yard, keep these things in mind:

• Choose plants with overlapping bloom times to provide flowers throughout the year
• Select plants with a variety of colors and shapes to attract different pollinators
• Plant in clumps, rather than single plants
• Whenever possible, choose native plants.  Avoid modern hybrids, especially those with “doubled” flowers, as the pollen, nectar, and fragrance is sometimes unwittingly bred out of these plants in exchange for “perfect” blooms
• Include night-blooming flowers for moths and bats.
• Avoid pesticides, even so-called "natural" ones such as Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). If you must use them, use the most selective and least toxic ones and apply them at night when most pollinators aren't active.

Include some  favorite plant choices for pollinators in your garden (see lists below). And then pull up a lawn chair and treat yourself to a little coffee and chocolate while you enjoy the birds and bees in your own back yard.

For more information:

Creating a Wild Backyard – Hummingbirds, Butterflies & Bees – Maryland Department of Natural Resources

Creating a Wild Backyard – Bees – Maryland Department of Natural Resources

U.S. Forest Service – Celebrating Wildflowers: Pollinators – http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/index.shtml

Pollinator Partnership – http://www.pollinator.org/

Pollinator Conservation Resources – Mid-Atlantic Region

Learn More About Pollinators – Chesterfield County, Virginia Cooperative Extension

10 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About Honey Bees

Ahhhh, there is nothing quite like a little bit of coffee and chocolate to brighten the day!

As I sip and nibble, delighting in the heady aroma and sweet, savory flavors, my mind always wanders to the birds and the bees. Why? Because both chocolate and coffee are two of the 1000+ plants that depend on visits from the birds and the bees (and other pollinators) to help spread the love, or in their case, pollen, from flower to flower.

I love wandering through my garden and hearing the buzz of the visiting bees. But bees have many more talents that just pollinating our plants.

Here is a list of 10 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About Honey Bees, which I collected from the Health Benefits of Honey Blog:

1) Bees tongues can help sniff out bombs – A company called Inscentinel Ltd. has developed Vapor Detection Instrumentation, which is scientific speak for a couple of bees taped to a piece of foam. The bees stick out their tongues when they smell an odor they have been trained to detect.

2) Honey bees can recognize faces – the honey bee, with a brain barely bigger than a pin head, can remember human faces for days after seeing them.

3) Bees are the only insects that produce edible food for humans (did you know that honey is actually bee puke? Ugh)

4) Some working bees can lift (in addition to their own bodies) 100% of their body weight.

5) Bees have been around (100 million years) much longer than humans (7 million years).

6) The queen bee lives up to 40 times longer than a worker bee.

7) The ONLY purpose in life, for the male bee, is to "service" the queen bee — and then he dies.

8) 3400 honey bees were taken on a NASA space flight.

9) Honey bees only use their stinger on vertebrates. When the bees are up against an invertebrate (such as a wasp) the worker bees will cluster around the insect and literally flex their muscles until the resulting heat kills the intruder. And if the heat doesn’t kill them, the lack of oxygen surely will.

10) The origin of the word honeymoon – In days of old, newlyweds were given a month’s worth of mead – a honey based booze – which they were to drink daily. The tradition was believed to promote matrimonial happiness and pregnancy… both things alcohol is very good at. We’ve been honeymooning ever since.

Stop back by on Monday when we'll have a post on How to Attract Pollinators to Your Garden

First rooftop garden built for bees!

As an eco-friendly gardener, I love honey bees! I love fresh honey and I understand the vital role that pollinators play in the production of some of my favorite plants (such as coffee and chocolate!)

So I was excited to see the news releases about the First Green Roof for honeybees that Green Roof Service LLC and Architecture and Design Inc (ADI) are creating on the rooftop of an historic Ice Storage House in Baltimore on November 9th.

Green roofs are beneficial for several reasons: they reduce the Heat Island Effect, absorb rain water and effectively reduce the amount of contaminants that reach the Chesapeake Bay. But by using bee-loving plants for a green roof, they can also help encourage beneficial pollinators!

One of the greatest threats to honey bees today is the lack of habitat due to urban sprawl. A rooftop garden for bees can provide an ever-blooming habitat and water source for bees while reducing the building’s energy consumption.

Jörg Breuning, founder of Green Roof Services LLC and a native of Germany, has worked for over 30 years in green roof design and installation and helped bring green roof technology to the United States. Breuning, who has been a key figure in establishing guidelines and regulations used by trade organizations to standardize the green roof industry, feels that the combination of modern green roof technology with honey bees is a 100% natural and successful symbiosis.

“Sustainable growth of plants in an urban environment and on green roofs benefit from pollinators as natural players,” said Mr. Breuning.

Diane Odell GRP, of ADI Architecture and Green Roof Service’s certified Green Roof Professional/landscape designer Kathryn Harrold sourced locally grown plants that are suited to the harsh environment of a green roof, yet also offer a rich source of food for the honey bee menu.

Lee Jaslow owner of Conservation Technology and the warehouse is proud of "practicing what he has preached" over the years. He stated that this is the first green roof with honey bees in Maryland and one of the first of its kind in the country. Conservation Technology provided all technical components of the green roof and will be in charge of maintenance ensuring its future success.

Construction for this historical moment for Baltimore's ecology will take place on Tuesday November 9th from 1:00 p.m. to 4 p.m. and is open to the public. Demonstrations explaining green roof technology will be held throughout the installation, and staff will be on hand to answer any questions about the installation and beekeeping. Admittance is free and open to the public.

Please visit the website: www.evolutionroof.com for project info or visit the company’s websites: www.greenroofservice.com or www.conservationtechnology.com

The historic Ice Storage House is located at 330 W. 23^rd St. a block off Howard Street. For more information on this project or to attend the installation, please contact honeybees@greenroofservice.com or visit evolutionroof.com.
 

To learn more about the importance of pollinators, visit these great sites:
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Pollinators
U.S. Forest Service Pollinators
Pollinator Partnership