Bees Are The Best!
Bees are simply the best pollinators anywhere in the world. People have understood the important role of bees in agriculture for thousands of years. The bee promotes productivity through the process of pollination.
Most of us have seen orchards with dozens of white wooden boxes containing bees. For centuries, farmers have harnessed the power of bees to increase production of food sources. While we have long known the benefits of bees in agriculture, interest in bees for city and suburban home gardens has increased steadily over the past several years.
It is not difficult to attract bees with a few simple measures that you can easily take. You will see your own garden flourish and you will further be helping the environment by growing plants because they use up carbon dioxide in the air. All crops, flowers and trees need carbon dioxide and the more they get of it, the more fruitful they become. Carbon dioxide is the basic raw material used by plants in photosynthesis to convert solar energy into food, fiber, and other forms of biomass.
Imagine if your diet was suddenly void of apples, pears, citrus fruits, carrots, grapes, olives, tomatoes and almonds and worst of all chocolate since it takes the cocoa bean to produce it. That is what life would be like without the often maligned bee. You may not know that about 30% of our temperate climate vegetable, fruit, and nut crops, along with most wildland flowers, depend on the pollinating services of bees. In the tropics, there is very little that grows without the pollination by bees and animals.
Bees depend on pollen and nectar for reproduction and survival. They are specially equipped to collect these foods. As they buzz from one flower to another, pollen is trapped in specialized hairs and other pollen-collecting body structures. Some of this pollen is carried back to the nest to feed bee babies (larvae) but some of it accidentally rubs off onto the reproductive parts of other flowers. If the flowers are of the same species, cross-pollination may occur. Nectar (or sugar water) gives bees energy for foraging and flight and also feeds growing baby bees.
Bees are very diverse in species and in habitats which makes them particularly efficient at pollinating a variety of the many flower species found in California. There are about 1,500 different bee species in all of California including carpenter bees, tiny bees that look like winged ants and the Osmia bee recognized by its metallic green coloration. Only the common European honey bee (Apis mellifera), the Alfalfa Leaf-Cutter bee (Megachile rotundata) and a close relative, Megachile apicalis, are not indigenous to northern California.
Each bee species is equipped for the flowers within their home regions. Bees have evolved to coincide with the timing of certain flowering plants and maintain a distinct life cycle that promotes propagation of the various bee types.
Bees Native to California are of the non-honeybee species. In comparison to the social honey bee which builds hives and lives in colonies, more than 95% of native bees live in solitude. A single female bee mates with a male, and then her job is to go it alone to forage and construct a nest site so that she can raise another generation of bees. Social structures or colonies do not exist with solitary bee species.
Pollinators world-wide are declining. Surveys conducted in the early to mid 1990s indicate that pollinating insects and animals are on the decline world wide. The main cause is habitat loss resulting from destruction of the ecosystems caused by ever increasing human development. New research is now aimed at how to conserve and protect existing pollinators.
The dramatic drop in numbers of pollinators has made this issue a global problem to be solved. The scientific community recognizes the need for extending information to the public and increasing general awareness of bees and other flower visitors to protect this valuable natural resource for the future.
One of the positive outcomes of the downward trend of pollinators has been to awaken the scientific community to the need for public dissemination of information that will increase awareness of the vital role of bees and other pollinators in our future.
