- Author: Christine Casey
Here at the Haven we're all about providing ideas to make bee gardening easy. We just want you to do it! One simple way to create a bee garden is to plant an herb garden. Not only will you help the bees, you'll have fresh herbs for cooking the food that bee pollination has provided. Let your herbs flower and you're all set; cut the flowers off as they fade to ensure repeat bloom. An added benefit is that many common Mediterranean-climate herbs are fairly low water users.
While herbs generally bloom in the summer and early fall, rosemary and borage bloom in the winter and early spring, respectively. Include these in your bee herb garden to maximize the resources you are providing. Herbs currently flowering at the Haven include basil, oregano, catnip, calamint, and rosemary.
- Author: Christine Casey
Fall is the best time of year to plant. Warm days, cool nights, and an upcoming winter of rain (we hope!) help ensure good plant establishment. When planning your bee garden, remember the following:
- Vary flower shape, size, and color
- Plant for year-round bloom
- Include a variety of plant families
- Plant in drifts
- Native plants for native bees
- Provide a water source
- Leave some bare, unmulched soil
- Add nesting blocks
For inspiration and information about planning a habitat garden, I recommend the following:
Natural Gardening in Small Spaces by Noel Kingsbury
Planting, a New Perspective by Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury
California Native Plants for the Garden by Carol Bornstein, David Fross, and Bart O'Brien
Insects and Gardens by Eric Grissell
California Bees and Blooms by Gordon W. Frankie, Robbin W. Thorp, Rollin E. Coville, and Barbara Ertter. Available October 2014.
Where do we get our plants?
California Flora Nursery, Fulton. Large, diverse selection of CA natives and select non-natives.
Green Acres, Sacramento. Large, diverse selection of common plants for our area, including some natives.
Ace Hardware, Davis. Good selection of common plants for our area, including some natives.
Friedmans Home Improvement, Petaluma, Sonoma, and Santa Rosa. Good selection of common plants for our area, including some natives.
Other local sources include Three Palms Nursery in Davis, Big Oak Nursery in Elk Grove, and Boxwood Nursery in Woodland, as well as the UC Davis Arboretum plant sales.
Get digging!
- Author: Kirsten Pearsons
Everyone can appreciate the beauty of flowers, but that's not to say flowers look nice just for us! We often get asked by Haven visitors how bees find their flower hosts. One way is through unique flower colors and shapes. Once bees are near a plant, flowers with intricate patterns can entice them even further through patterns on the petals that direct bees straight towards nectar rewards. Like runway lights at the airport, these intricate nectar guides can help orient pollinators during their flower visits.
Nectar guides are doubly useful for bees, as they use guides at individual flowers to find nectar faster and as search images to target similar flowers. Since plants of the same species tend to be flowering at the same time, loyal bees can be more efficient than bees that hop from one species to another. It's a win-win situation since loyal bees can collect nectar with less effort and the flowers get a greater chance of receiving pollen from their own species (Functional Ecology 2011, 24, 1293-1301).
So what about simple monotone flowers? Well, the thing about nectar guides is that we humans can't always see what the bees do! We can see all of the colors from red to violet, but bees see a shifted spectrum from yellow through ultra-violet (UV). So to bees, even seemingly plain flowers may have bold nectar guide patterns. With UV sensors, even humans can get a glimpse of what nectar guides look like to bees. (Plant Species Biology 2013, 28, 177-184). The web site Flowers in Ultra-Violet has many images comparing flowers in daylight and UV light in which the guides are visible.
Other than bees, hummingbirds, hawkmoths, and syrphid flies have been found to respond to nectar guides. Some flowers even have overlapping visible nectar guides and UV nectar guides, possibly to attract birds and bees simultaneously. (Functional Ecology 2011, 24, 1293-1301).
As you walk through the Haven, look at our flowers for these intricate patterns. Here are two of the species in our garden with visible nectar guides:
/div>- Author: Christine Casey
The Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven will hold our last open house of the year on October 3, 2014. Please join us for special events and activities from 5:30pm to 7pm. Specimens of the garden's most common bees will be available for viewing and tips on identifying bees will be presented. A guided tour at 6pm will focus on fall- and winter-blooming bee plants and several styles of bee houses will be available for purchase to support the garden.
The Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven is a half-acre garden located on the UC Davis campus devoted exclusively to bee pollinator conservation and education. We offer free admission and are open every day from dawn to dusk. From Hutchison Drive, take Hopkins and make the first right onto Bee Biology Road; the garden is at the end of the road.
- Author: Christine Casey
Nothing says late summer like sunflowers. No matter where they are growing -- a commercial crop, flowers in a garden, or volunteers by the side of the road -- this iconic yellow flower reminds us that fall is around the corner.
Sunflowers are visited by a variety of bees; these visits are so consistent that sunflowers are used as the sentinel plant in The Great Sunflower Project, a San Francisco State University-based citizen science project to monitor bees.
Among the bees that visit sunflowers are honey bees and a complex of California native bees known collectively as sunflower bees. Surveys in Yolo and Solano counties found that 25 species of native bees visited sunflower crops, with an average of 37% of visits from native bees (Fremontia (2002) 30 (3-4): 41-49). Other research in Yolo County showed an interesting behavioral interaction between introduced honey bees and the native bees that, on average, doubled the pollination service of the honey bees that are typically placed in sunflower crops (PNAS (2006) 103:13890-13895).
These native bees include Diadasia spp., Melissodes spp., and a perennial visitor to my own bee garden, Svastra obliqua. Visit the Haven's YouTube channel to see video of this bee leaving its overnight sleeping aggregation as it warms up in the morning.
Sunflowers and other fall-blooming plants provide critical resources for honey bees as they put up stores of honey for the winter. Join us at the Haven for our fall open house, October 3 from 5:30 to 7pm, to see these and other fall-blooming bee plants.
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