Are you seeing bees?

Very nice Belinda! I took some pictures a couple of weeks ago of a little busy bee working his magic on my squash:

Bees are amazing creatures and kudos to you for venturing into bee keeping!

songstriss wrote:A couple years ago I planted a flower which I do not remember the name of. It is growing up all over the place. I let them grow because the bees love them. I dedicated an area of my yard just for them because I really like them and so do the bees. If anyone knows the name please let me know.



As you can see the bees like them.



I also have another flower called a Chocolate flower. It is a yellow daisy like flower that in the morning when the sun shines on them they smell like chocolate. I love em. The bees also like them a lot too.



As you can see they are in desperate need of dead heading. The plus side is that I have a ton of seeds. If anyone is interested in getting some just email me your address. That being said is it ok to put them in snack bags?
The orange flowers will soon have seeds so I can send those as well.

Nancy I received my seeds three days ago and just haven't had time to thank you for them. Thank you so much for them and for the nice note and instructions and information. I am excited to plant the orange daisy like flowers and also the chocolate flower. Ummmm, chocolate! I have just the right spots for both of them. I have an area in my back yard that I have wanted to plant some flowers and I think I will put the chocolate ones there so I can smell them when I go out in the mornings! I have one area on my side yard that I am going to switch out from grass (and weeds) to the flowers that I want to not have to water as often. In that area I can eventually get a bee hive started. I just have to get the time to do the research and my husband has a friend that we help get us up and running with a hive. I know I will end up taking care of that so I have been hesitant to add one more thing on my plate.

Thank you again for the flowers, it was also fun receiving a "real letter" instead of a bill!

RoOsTeR wrote:Very nice Belinda! I took some pictures a couple of weeks ago of a little busy bee working his magic on my squash:

Bees are amazing creatures and kudos to you for venturing into bee keeping!

That's a squash bee - Peponapis - and you are fortunate to have them! Honey bees are used for fields of squash and pumpkins for pollination, and they do an excellent job, but they tend to ignore small plantings such as gardens. My squash are entirely pollinated by squash bees and bumblebees, even though I have 5 beehives within a hundred feet of my garden. The honey bees would rather go to the melons and cukes, where they do a great job.

I jus spent the past week putting vynal siding on my house hada do battle with honey bees, mud wasps, bumble bees hornets too not fun they was nun to happy when iwas closing off their ingress an egress's

Boog

Pollinator wrote:

LittleGardener wrote:Presently researching all the Bee-encouraging plants we could grow, and as always your helpful suggestions are invaluable. Thank you again

Keep in mind there are many kinds of bees besides the familiar honey bees and bumble bees. ...
We have a little squash bee that only goes to squash blossoms. Blueberry bees like the redbud blossoms, then they come to the blueberries and huckleberries later.
The whole point is not so much to "attract bees" but to give them nest sites, good feed, water, and freedom from pesticide poisoning, so their populations will recover back to normal levels. This is a long-term program that requires some thought.
If bee populations are normal, competition will ensure that every blossom will get worked.
If they are sparse, they will only work the more attractive blossoms. In that case, planting to attract bees, may succeed in attracting the ones that are present right away from the garden veggies that you want pollinated.

Thank you for the insight, as to how many different bees exist. - In a way I'd love to have a beehive, but we won't; main reason: Zoning. So we need to contend ourselves with as you say "good feed, water, & freedom from pesticide poisoning". I refuse
to use pesticides; & by good feed you mean? besides Bee-encouraging plants. - Say a family has a greenhouse, for growing food year round. What other kinds of plants would be good to ensure at least 3 different kinds of "Bee-food" in every season?

http://www.pollinator.org/PDFs/Identifying_Native_Bees_PosterFINAL.pdf

I can't open this link camp. I have had a lot of pollination issues this year, my cukes especially. We have sweat bees all over right now and they hover over the barbeque grill constantly. I give them all these flowers and they want ribs I don't know a lot about bees but these guys deffinately aren't interested in pollinating.

cheyannarach wrote:I can't open this link camp. I have had a lot of pollination issues this year, my cukes especially. We have sweat bees all over right now and they hover over the barbeque grill constantly. I give them all these flowers and they want ribs I don't know a lot about bees but these guys deffinately aren't interested in pollinating.

cut and paste the link into your browser address bar. it should open. I opened it chrome and FF. Wasps and such are omnivores and will eat just about anything they can catch, flower pollen nectar or more likely other bugs and such (meat).

I've had problems with my cucumber pollination as well. Don't know why they don't like my cucs?

LittleGardener wrote:

Pollinator wrote:

LittleGardener wrote:Presently researching all the Bee-encouraging plants we could grow, and as always your helpful suggestions are invaluable. Thank you again

Keep in mind there are many kinds of bees besides the familiar honey bees and bumble bees. ...
We have a little squash bee that only goes to squash blossoms. Blueberry bees like the redbud blossoms, then they come to the blueberries and huckleberries later.
The whole point is not so much to "attract bees" but to give them nest sites, good feed, water, and freedom from pesticide poisoning, so their populations will recover back to normal levels. This is a long-term program that requires some thought.
If bee populations are normal, competition will ensure that every blossom will get worked.
If they are sparse, they will only work the more attractive blossoms. In that case, planting to attract bees, may succeed in attracting the ones that are present right away from the garden veggies that you want pollinated.

Thank you for the insight, as to how many different bees exist. - In a way I'd love to have a beehive, but we won't; main reason: Zoning. So we need to contend ourselves with as you say "good feed, water, & freedom from pesticide poisoning". I refuse
to use pesticides; & by good feed you mean? besides Bee-encouraging plants. - Say a family has a greenhouse, for growing food year round. What other kinds of plants would be good to ensure at least 3 different kinds of "Bee-food" in every season?

Have you considered raising Mason Bees?

They are stingless solitary bees that are fairly easy to raise and present no zoning issues for you.

You wont get any honey out of them...but they are perfect if you want to have some extra pollinators hanging around.

RoOsTeR wrote:I've had problems with my cucumber pollination as well. Don't know why they don't like my cucs?

Several species of bumblebees, as well as honeybees LOVE cukes. If the plants are healthy and producing normal flowers - it's a simply a problem of not enough bees.

You may see some bees, but if they are showing symptoms of poor pollination, they are not delivering enough grains of pollen for full pollination.

If the weather is hot, they have fewer hours to deliver that pollen before it dies or the stigma becomes unreceptive. In other words, a marginal bee population may give sufficient bee visits when the whether is perfect (fair weather at 85 degrees), and the bees can work from 8 - 4, but when the temperature goes up 10-15 degrees, and the bees can only work from 7-11, the bees can only accomplish half as many visits.

That's one reason why we want bee populations at saturation levels for optimum garden production.

Another reason is that there are many flowers that are much less attractive than cucumbers - eggplant for example - and we want enough bees so that they compete for blossoms, and every blossom gets its requisite number of visits.

Daniel9999 wrote:

Have you considered raising Mason Bees?

They are stingless solitary bees that are fairly easy to raise and present no zoning issues for you.

You wont get any honey out of them...but they are perfect if you want to have some extra pollinators hanging around.

Keep in mind that the mason bee is a spring bee, that goes dormant for the rest of the season. Thus, they are wonderful pollinators for spring-blooming fruit, but useless for your squash, melons, cukes and other summer and fall blooming plants.

Pollinator wrote:

Daniel9999 wrote:

Have you considered raising Mason Bees?

They are stingless solitary bees that are fairly easy to raise and present no zoning issues for you.

You wont get any honey out of them...but they are perfect if you want to have some extra pollinators hanging around.

Keep in mind that the mason bee is a spring bee, that goes dormant for the rest of the season. Thus, they are wonderful pollinators for spring-blooming fruit, but useless for your squash, melons, cukes and other summer and fall blooming plants.

Very true.

If you want summer pollination you can raise leafcutter bees.

You can also try to raise bumble bees at home....the USDA has a great starter guide available online.

http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/54280500/BumbleBeeRearingGuide.pdf

Pollinator wrote:

Daniel9999 wrote:

Have you considered raising Mason Bees?

They are stingless solitary bees that are fairly easy to raise and present no zoning issues for you.

You wont get any honey out of them...but they are perfect if you want to have some extra pollinators hanging around.

Keep in mind that the mason bee is a spring bee, that goes dormant for the rest of the season. Thus, they are wonderful pollinators for spring-blooming fruit, but useless for your squash, melons, cukes and other summer and fall blooming plants.

I never knew that. Thanks Pollinator!

Daniel9999 wrote:

Pollinator wrote:

Daniel9999 wrote:

Have you considered raising Mason Bees?

They are stingless solitary bees that are fairly easy to raise and present no zoning issues for you.

You wont get any honey out of them...but they are perfect if you want to have some extra pollinators hanging around.

Keep in mind that the mason bee is a spring bee, that goes dormant for the rest of the season. Thus, they are wonderful pollinators for spring-blooming fruit, but useless for your squash, melons, cukes and other summer and fall blooming plants.

Very true.

If you want summer pollination you can raise leafcutter bees.

You can also try to raise bumble bees at home....the USDA has a great starter guide available online.

http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/54280500/BumbleBeeRearingGuide.pdf

Or honey bees.

I think one of the most important things is to have healthy garden space that's not polluted with all sorts of things, organic and non-organic alike, that kills insects indiscriminately.

Read and follow label directions, so many folks don't bother....

I've seen a few bees.... Some come around our pumpkin vines and pollinate the flowers there. Or they're coming around to sting me. And the occassional wasp and bumble bee.

This year I interplanted cilantro and dill with other things in the square beds, and as soon as the cilantro/dill started flowering, the bees showed up. Made me wonder what the beekeepers thought when their bees made cilantro/dill-flavored honey. Definitely will plant more dill/cilantro throughout the garden next year. Nonna

The bees in my garden are so busy. You can hear them from yards away. They love all my herbs as well as veggie flowers. They also love my flowers--buddleia, calendula, monarda, yarrow, lobelia and coneflowers. They are welcomed with pleasure and seem to know that...we can share space and they leave me alone when I remind them how I love them.

The bees have finally decided they like my cucumbers! I think most of the issues with my cucs have been climate related after going over what Pollinator has said. The bees just haven't had the proper conditions or time to do their thang. Pollination hasn't been perfect yet, but these are the first female cucs to develop all season




Sorry about the bad quality photo's. It's somewhat of a challenge taking pictures in my current condition lol

YAY! My cukes are thinking about getting going, they better hurry up! Went out the other day and I had enough at once to make a jar of refrigerator pickles! Hoping they do that a few more times!

my sunflowers are buzzing with bees. There's pollen all over the leaves too!

This morning, I saw a bee enjoying itself in a newly-opened male zucchini flower adjacent to a female flower!

Typically, I see at least several bees in the yard every day, although when we have a chilly night, they seem to hide in their hive.

donnainzone10 wrote:This morning, I saw a bee enjoying itself in a newly-opened male zucchini flower adjacent to a female flower!

Typically, I see at least several bees in the yard every day, although when we have a chilly night, they seem to hide in their hive.

Many species of male bees normally sleep in the flowers. If you open closed blossoms late in the day, you'll usually find some male squash bees, if they are around your area. They are slightly smaller than a honey bee.

Rooster, looks like you've got enough cukes for a jar of brine-cured dill pickles! Yum. Nonna

Nonna.PapaVino wrote:Rooster, looks like you've got enough cukes for a jar of brine-cured dill pickles! Yum. Nonna

Lol, Nonna I'm so happy! I've waited all summer for some darn cucumbers