Let Your BEES Do the Gardening
IF YOU’VE NEVER EQUATED those big, juicy, homegrown tomatoes — or lack thereof — with bees, it’s time to grab some wood (literally). From alkali bees to shaggy fuzzy-foot bees, you’ll harvest bigger fruits and vegetables, as well as higher yields, if you have enough of these pollinating bees visiting your garden. By planting insect-pollinated plants and creating bee habitat, your garden bounty will ripen faster and taste better. I bet you’re thinking gardening is sounding a whole lot easier right about now.
Cornell University researchers have found that bee-assisted pollination of strawberries can increase fruit size up to 40 percent. Other crops that depend upon native bees for pollination include tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, pumpkins, squash, and melons, as well as most berries and fruit trees. Heavy reliance on pesticides, loss of habitat, and monoculture crop systems have decimated pollinator populations.
“Monoculture makes it impossible for any bee, native or otherwise, to keep year-round populations sufficient for pollination,” says David Green, who maintains the native bee website www.Pollinator.com. “A modern orchard has such a flush of bloom in spring that the pollination task is overwhelming. The rest of the year, it’s starvation or even a toxic environment.”
Besides avoiding pesticides, you can support native bee populations by protecting natural
