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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jazi was quite adamant about wanting this newsletter to focus on her cousins, the native bees. She\u2019s happy that her memoir, Bee-Coming Strong<\/em>, 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\u2019re crowding out the food supply of the native bees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe thing is\u201d, Jazi explains, \u201cnative plants need native bees to help pollinate them. The native bee \u2018buzz pollinates\u2019, 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\u2019s 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\u2019re not selfish\u2026just different from them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, honestly, native honeybees often don\u2019t 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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ok, so what can we do to help out her cousins, the native bees, as well as all pollinators? It\u2019s fairly simple\u2026plant 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\u2019d be supporting all of these important little creatures. Here\u2019s a link that will take you to the Xerces Society page,<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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!<\/p>\n\n\n\n