All gardeners need pollination. If you raise plants like flowers for seeds, tomatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers, and watermelons, or have trees like the pear and apple in your garden, then you must have pollination before you can have a good yield.
In almost all cases, the bee does the job of pollinating your garden plants.
Benefits Of Bees
A report by the United States Department of Agriculture says that every state could benefit by having more hives of bees.
Some areas need two or three times the number of hives they now have. That is if adequate pollination of crops is to be assured.
Although many people think of the bee as furnishing honey for hot biscuits at breakfast, the bee is far more important from an agricultural standpoint.
For every dollar’s worth of honey the bee produces, it contributes $50 worth of good to agriculture by pollinating plants.
There are some 5,000 species and many billions of bees in North America, but modern farming has wiped out many swarms of wild bees. Other swarms have been wiped out by insecticides that control mosquitoes and other insects.
Areas, where bees are reduced in number, have shown steadily declining yields of food, forage and fodder crops, and even cotton and tobacco.
The yields in your garden are lower than they should be because of a lack of proper pollination due primarily to the insufficiency of bees.
Bees’ Important Job In Pollinating
Tame bees pollinate cultivated plants for the most part. However, some bees travel as far as six to seven miles to sip the nectar from the blossoms in your garden.
When the bee sips the nectar, it performs its important job of pollinating. The pollen from the blossom collects on the hairs of the bee’s body.
The pollen is like a male sex cell. When the bee visits the next blossom, some pollen rubs off onto the stigma or female part. This fertilizes the plant so that it can produce offspring.
The plant would not bear fruit or seeds without this pollination or fertilization process. This would cause yields of flower seeds, tomatoes, peas, beans, and fruits to be very low.
A little pollination is brought about by the wind carrying pollen. But the wind can only be depended upon for a very low yield for plants requiring insect pollination.
There are certain things that you can do to make sure that your garden is properly pollinated. One of these is to have some plants growing which attract bees.
Bees Recognizes Colors
Of all the insects, the honeybee is best able to recognize colors. It recognizes four distinct colors other than gray — orange-yellow, green, blue-violet, and ultraviolet.
We can’t see ultraviolet with our eyes, but this is the brightest part of the spectrum to the bee.
It is these colors that draw the bee from far away. For example, a bee flying over a bed of flowers in bloom sees a mosaic of lightness against the dark green of grass and trees. As it gets closer, it can smell the flowers.
Once the bee finds an especially good source of nectar, it stakes out a claim on the area by scenting the flower with a little of its body scent. This comes from a scent gland on the abdomen and is a NO TRESPASS sign to other bees.
The bee takes a nectar sample and flies straight back to the hive. With elaborate dances and gestures and the sample of nectar it has brought, the bee tells the others in the hive of its find.
Many bees then visit your garden. This is when your garden begins to get pollinated properly.
Bees In Spring
In spring, bees frequent the following:
- Willow
- Hazel
- Plane
- Apple
- Pear
- Alder
- Gooseberry
- Currant
- Mignonette
- Heathers
- clovers
- Lespedezas
- Multiflora roses
- Black locust
- American elm
- Lythrum or loosestrife
- Dropmore purple (anchusa)
- Wild mustard
To draw bees plant some of these.
Herbs that draw bees are the following:
- Lemon balm
- Basil
- Red bergamot (monarda)
- Borage
- Butterfly weed (Asclepias)
- Italian bugloss (anchusa)
- Catnip (nepeta)
- Chicory (witloof)
- Sweet cicely
- Daphne
- Dropwort (Filipendula)
- Fennel
- Germander
- Ground ivy
- Hyssop
- Lavender
- Marjoram
- Dead nettle
- Sweet clover
- Queen-of-the meadow
- Rosemary
- Sage
- Winter savory
- Thyme
- Teasel
- Foxglove
These are also good for salads, pot herbs, teas, and flavorings. Trees that provide bees with homes and food include, besides the American elm and honey locust, the Russian olive, catalpa, basswood, sycamore, and wild plum.
44659 by Charles H. Coleman