Bee Action

I’m so pleased to announce that tomorrow I’ll be participating in a live panel discussion about creating habitat in our gardens for native bees.

This live event is sponsored by Dave Hunter of Crown Bees to launch the Bee GAP (Gardeners Adding Pollinators) program designed to help gardeners create a garden oasis (what I call an Ecosystem Garden) to attract more native bees and help scientists learn more about their needs and their use in pollinating our food supply.

You may have heard that Colony Collapse Disorder and several mites and other pathogens has greatly reduced the availability of honey bees for farmers to use in pollinating crops. What you may not know is that honey bees are not native to this country, but have been imported here for use in agriculture.

Now that the honey bees are in such trouble from diseases spreading rampantly through the colonies, scientists and farmers are looking for other options. Fortunately, the solution has been here all along: there are over 4000 species of native bees here in the US, and many of them would be very good at pollinating our crops.

Many orchardists and other farmers have been using native Mason Bees to pollinate their fruit trees with great success. And Crown Bees has been a leader in dispensing information about this pollinator to farmers. Now they are reaching out to home gardeners to educate them to help by creating welcoming habitats for native bees in their gardens.

This will be a live webinar with 4 other speakers and myself. It will start at 12 noon (Eastern time) tomorrow afternoon, Saturday March 30. So please pop over to Crown Bees now to sign up and find out all the details about Bee Action. I can’t wait to see you there!