Discuss: The Headbonker’s Ball

This is great! I’m very encouraged by people doing this type of work. I’ve been following the reports from the research on Colony Collapse Disorder, and with all the multiple stresses on honeybees from pollution, pesticides, parasites, high-fructose corn syrup feeding, shortened hibernation, and extensive trucking, single-year lifespans has become the norm. With our industrial mindset prostituting our agrarian past,it seems crucial at this point for regular citizens to step up and make a contribution to our diverse pollinators, and knowing the dietary requirements for the pollinators in a specific region makes the effort pay off better than going by hit-or-miss gardenmaking decisions. This is good; I’m a professional landscape gardener, and try to incorporate habitat requirements whenever possible, even to overriding clients’ ideas at times (whoops!). Thanks for a great article.

I live in Austin, Texas. Last year we didn’t have too many bees in my neighborhood and friends who live out in the country had NO visible bees - and gardens that didn’t produce well in some cases. I was really worried but this year, fortunately, it has been different. A couple of weeks ago a neighbor had a beautiful plum tree in bloom. It was covered with bees! We all stood around admiring the tree and applauding the bees! I am inspired to find some bee-friendly flowers for my balcony garden. Thanks for the good article.

What a wonderful story! When I lived for a year in SoCal and discovered slugs eating my annuals (it was a rental) I went to the garden centers asking for plants that slugs did not like. They kept pointing out the slug poison. I ended up buying as many annuals (and a few perennials) as I could fit into the place, so the slugs couldn’t possibly consume them all. Then when I saw aphids, I went and bought ladybugs. Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought that as soon as they left my garden, they would be poisoned everywhere else.
Gardens were really disappointing down there, all trimmed, pruned, and lifeless. Hopefully people can be taught to enjoy life again.

I loved this article--it is so inspiring. I wish I had known about this years ago. I have been amazed at how bees can work flower-boxes six floors up in the middle of a city--and now I understand better how important they truly are.  I’m slowly becoming a bee maniac!

Wonderful article! 85 varieties of bees - who knew? NOW, does he have any information on Colorado gardens? I’ve been noticing native bees in my yard, but not knkowing how to tell one bee from another I’ve assumed they were all the same. Now I’llhave to look closer!

Great Job!

After going back to the beginning of the article I was struck by the picture of rows and rows of DEAD bees. Not very inspiring - even though the article was.

British researchers and citizen scientists have also found that gardens play an important role in helping native bee species. You can information about the British Bumblebee Nest Survey at http://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/pie/BumblebeeSurvey/Report.html

This is in response to Kathryn Alexander’s comments about all the dead bees. We only collect a few bees from each place to get a representable sample of the diversity.  Believe me, we all love bees more than anything and we hate to kill them, but this helps us study each area and come to know what kinds of bees are in different places and what we can do to help attract these bees in the future.  If anyone would like more info about how they can attract native bees to their garden, visit our website at http://nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens/
If you don’t live in California try using more native plants in your garden because the bees will be more apt to use those over showy ornamentals.