Bees are amazing. Bees are responsible for pollinating our natural foods, beverages, and ingredients in medicines. 1/3 of everything that we consume comes from pollinated plants. What’s horrifying is that bees are disappearing at an astonishing rate. Bees are disappearing because of pesticides, loss of habitat, and food supply.
What can you do to help save the bees?
Plant a bee garden. Bees need flowers that provide nectar, their food. You don’t need a lot of space to make bees happy. Choose native flowers and plants that produce nectar and pollen such as Sunflowers, Daisies, Foxgloves, Asters, Cosmos, and Zinnias. Select a colorful rainbow of flowers (blues, purples, oranges, and yellows) that bloom throughout the seasons, and never use pesticides.
There are other ways that you can encourage bees (and other pollinators) into your garden too:
- Leave-it-alone gardening works best – so dedicate a patch to let nature and the wild do what it does best.
- Since there has been a loss of milkweed, there has been a decline in the number of monarch butterflies, which plant plenty (it is the only place they lay eggs and they eat the plant too).
- Have shallow pools of water – bees are often assumed dead but really just need a rest and some water. Change the water regularly, and put little pebbles into the water so little bees have somewhere to stand.
- Get a bee house! You don’t need to have a big beekeeper setup, but little roost modules are perfect.
Do you have a bee garden?
