Bee wise - bee kind to bees

It's National Bee Week in New Zealand May 30 to June 3, but they were ahead of us in the US two weeks ago, celebrating the 200th birthday of the 'father of American bee-keeping'. 

My friend Reihana, who has two summer gardens (one in Massachussetts and one at the top of the Coromandel Peninsula) sent this report with pictures.

''Can't believe the next town over is where Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth preached and experimented with hives...

Pics from this past weekend at the  200th birthday of Lorenzo Langstroth, once Pastor at the Second Congregational Church, Greenfield. He invented the moveable frame beehive that revolutionized hives and the method of keeping bees.  As you can see they went all out to involve little kids at the party.  

 Apparently May is the time to keep your eyes open for swarming bees “A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay” and this was the then philosophy, to make bee keeping a viable part of the rural community.  There were lots of experimenters in those days and the clue was a 3/8ths inch gap between the slats, easy to clean and remove, the optimum dimensions of a hive was found to be 1 and a half cubic feet.  We learned not to breathe on bees and to be gentle and slow in our movements, that Italian queens are gentle and tend not to swarm in their first season. The  Xerces Society [an American society devoted to invertebrate conservation] can be googled to find out about the latest research on bees.  We still know very little about them.''

A bumble bee on a hebe flower in the Eco Garden at the start of National Bee Week

 

At a time when bees are under threat from industrial farming (pesticides, herbicides, loss of floral biodiversity), climate change, and from new pests and diseases spreading around the world, and given how important bees are to pollinating fruit and vegetable crops, it seems wise to learn everything we can about them, and do everything we can to protect them. This includes packing the garden with flowering plants that will keep them happy. I have found that the blue bog sage, Salvia uliginosa, is a great late-autumn plant for bees, providing them with nectar into June, when most other summer-flowering plants have given up. At this time of year bees are also grateful for autumn-flowering camellias, and other shrubs that flower in the cold months. Native hebes are an ideal choice as a bee-friendly plant, as there is a species or two in flower in every season.