Urban Bee Gardens

Today's Presentation by Marissa Ponder of UC Berkeley at the SLO Botanical Garden was enjoyed by many native bees enthusiasts. The following is the summary of her presentation.

Native bees are 70% ground nesters, and 30% cavity nesters. There are 1600 different native bees species in California, out of 4000 in the U.S. Bumble bees do live in colonies but the others are solitary bees.

Various species are active at different times of the year, they have shorter life cycles (weeks to months) than European (imported) bees which have more honey than other bees because they store it up for overwintering.

Only female bees have stingers, because they use the same tube to either lay eggs or to sting. The males do little else but wait around to mate with the female bees. The females build the nests for laying their eggs. One type of bees, the leaf cutter bees, cut leaves to surround a cell for each egg.

European (honey) bees are generalists more than the native bees. The research on native bees at UCB began ten years ago. Dr. Gordon Frankie began researching native bees in Berkeley and now has gardens that he and his researchers check periodically to determine how many species are active there.

Two sites in the SLO area are being monitored: The Cal Poly Arborteum and the Emerson Community Gardens at the corner of Nipomo and Pismo
n SLO. They have found 87 species of native bees in our city. At the Emerson Community Gardens, there were orginally hardly any flowers, mostly only vegetables. In the last three years, Franke has supplied 300 California native plants to that garden to encourage native bees. Barb Smith, who has been volunteering as the contact point for him, spoke about how this has been working, and how improved the garden is in both beauty and productivity. It has been written up in the Sunset Magazine blog and other places on-line. She called it "A Pollination Explosion". She noted that the bees are shy, not aggressive. She called Frankie the Johny Appleseed of native bees.

Ms. Ponder, explained many more facts about native bees including how to encourage them in a garden. It is important not to use pesticides, and to leave areas without mulch so the bees have a place to build their nests in the ground. She did explain how to build wooden cavities of differing sizes for cavity nesters also.

She said that native bees may be better pollinators, and they are early risers. Male bees, because their main object is to mate with the females, often sleep in flowers to catch the females. Some males however, are territorial and seem to be offering to protect the territory of female bees.

A good way to encourage bees to come to your yard is to plant natives flowers in patches, with many different flowers together (20 different species). They need both pollen and nectar so flowers should be planned to provide both. At their garden they use non-natives to extend the blooming season in the fall.

Other techniques that are useful in encouraging bee activity is to dead head flowers, and even leave hollow stems for a whole year and some may use these as nests.

One person asked how far native bees can fly, the answer was that larger bees can fly further some as far as 5 km. She showed photos and listed several plants that are especially sought out by native bees:

ceanothus, black sage, seaside daisy, chinese houses, blue headed gilia, gumplant, tuckseed (coreopsis grandiflora), california poppy, tansy leaf phacelia, sunflowers (non-native), and cosmos (non-native).

A person who provides habitat for wildlife can apply to have their garden
certified as Wildlife Habitat by The National Wildlife Federation.

coreopsis grandiflora