Hello and happy August to our hive of Jazianzza friends. We hope that the summer is bringing you unexpected delights and a greater openness to the little things in life.
Jazi was quite adamant about wanting this newsletter to focus on her cousins, the native bees. She’s happy that her memoir, Bee-Coming Strong, is bringing a greater awareness to us two-leggeds about the importance and wonder of her siblings. However, she wanted us to understand the critical importance of the native honeybee in the ecosystem. She loves that so many people have started to keep bees as a hobby, but cautions that she and her siblings are posing real challenges to the well-bee-ing of the native honeybees. Jazi feels a bit awkward about telling you that there are now so many of her siblings in the US, they’re crowding out the food supply of the native bees.
“The thing is”, Jazi explains, “native plants need native bees to help pollinate them. The native bee ‘buzz pollinates’, where it grabs a flower and shakes the pollen loose. The pollen sticks on their stiff hairs, and then a bit of the pollen gets brushed off on the next flower they visit. That’s what is so significant about the native bee. We, on the other hand, tend to mix the pollen with nectar so that it can be carried on our back legs when we fly back to the hive. I really admire the way they give so freely of themselves in this way. We’re not selfish…just different from them.
Also, honestly, native honeybees often don’t really stand a chance with the food supply when there are so many hives across the country. We crowd them out. And guess what? We also unfortunately can spread diseases to them. This makes me so sad.”
Ok, so what can we do to help out her cousins, the native bees, as well as all pollinators? It’s fairly simple…plant native plants as well as avoid all pesticides. If we could all just do our part to ensure that at least a portion of our garden contains native plants, we’d be supporting all of these important little creatures. Here’s a link that will take you to the Xerces Society page, where you can find the best pollinator plants for your area. The Xerces Society strongly suggests focusing on habitat and not on bees to help save our pollinators.
Here’s a short video of the marvelous transformation that can occur by planting native wildflowers in a basically useless grass island in a local park. The results are astounding!
We wanted you to see this remarkable little video of bumblebees playing with a ball! Who knew what a sense of humor these little bee-ings had! Jazi told me she wouldn’t have been as excited to take part in this sport…
Again, if you haven’t seen the wonderful documentary My Garden of a Thousand Bees, by Martin Dohrn, we highly recommend it. Here’s a PBS link to it that will at least give you an idea of the wonder of bumblebees.
Ok, just two more short and cute bumblebee videos. We can’t resist!
We hope that you have been able to take advantage of some of the book offerings we’ve been a part of. We’ll be able to send you another link for more in a couple of weeks. Until then, please enjoy your summer, think about the possibility of planting more native plants, and bee well!
Has a bee ever landed on you, and instead of getting scared, you appreciate the possibility that you got confused for a flower?
(author unknown)
And as always, please feel free to share this newsletter with friends who have children or grandchildren, or are teachers, caregivers, bee lovers, or anyone else you think might benefit/delight from reading this. They can subscribe by simply going to AnandamayiBaker.com and filling out the form.