To bee or not to bee; there is no question

Honey Bee Scutellata spp. benefiting from Leonotus alba planted for her winter foraging needs

Urban beekeeping and the custodianship of our pollinators

There can be no doubt that we all need in some small way to become the keepers of bees even if we can’t all be beekeepers.

I love this adage ~ “No Honey, no hives but solitary bees have important lives.”

Honey bees represent but a small percentage of the bigger picture. It is human nature to be attracted to their sweet offerings, therefore honey bees inevitably command our attention as they speak to our sweet tooth and get more press.

More importantly however are the small pollinators, of the stingless and solitary varieties, including Carpenter Bees, Solitary Wasps and Ladybirds. They tend to be overlooked as they don’t offer any sweet rewards. In reality they are the ones doing up to 75% of our crop pollination.

Bee happy and create a wall of curiosities on a north facing blank wall. It will become a hive of activity as soon as you provide the much-needed safe housing sites

Urbanization encourages us to keep things orderly. Remaining largely ignorant we are in the habit of keeping our urban gardens neat and trim as we industriously weed out dandelions and clover, cut and clear the dead wood, and go about the business of deadheading the agapanthus and mowing our lawns in a seasonal cycle. These natural cycles are disrupted by us as we all tend to over tend. Keeping our neat back yards, does not keep bees. Stop for a minute and take pause; it may seem a small thing in the grand scheme of our busy lives, but when next you instruct your gardener to rake the leaves or actively remove that dead branch, become aware, informed and observant. On closer inspection you will notice there are vital nesting sites in these natural sheddings.

The trend for bug hotels indicates the climate of change and awareness, which should become the norm. By all means keep your garden as neat as a pin, but seriously consider replacing their lost nesting sites with something aesthetically pleasing, by starting a wall of curiosities with bee nesting sites or gifting that special someone with a bug hotel. Not mere decorative whimsy, these insect hotels offer safe, dry alternative nesting sites. They take minimal effort, require hardly any maintenance and are a curious delight, providing informative insights into these often-overlooked critters.

Here are some suggestions on what you can do to help pollinators

Build a bee hotel – you can use these to create a wall of curiosities

A bee hotel

DID YOU KNOW
Stingless bees (like the one in the photo preparing her nesting site, become territorial and will return to the sight using their GPS locating skills more than once in a season.

DID YOU KNOW
The flamboyant Cuckoo wasp will parasitise these nesting sites, piggy backing on the solitary bee’s hard work, everything has its place

Build a home for Ladybirds

When last did you see a Ladybird? Lady birds are under threat, they support our bees by keeping other bugs at bay on the flowers, fruit and vegetables they forage on and pollinate. To help all pollinators PLEASE DO NOT USE INSECTICIDES!

Convert a bird house into a ladybug hotel, offering hibernating ladybirds a safe place to snuggle and over winter

Bee come aware – Provide water for bees and make sure your birdbath is bee friendly option by adding marbles and pebbles. Leave a pool noodle floating about in your pools, they act as life rafts for bees.

Convert your birdbath into a bee friendly zone by adding marbles or pebbles, so they don’t drown. Making honey is a thirsty business.

Urban Honey Beekeeping – For the more adventurous. Bee and Keeper friendly hives, with a modern twist offering an auto harvesting approach, regular hive maintenance and inspections are part of good beekeeping practice. It’s not just about the Honey it’s about the love of Bees.

My Lego Beehive is a fully functioning sample of an Auto harvesting hive with observation windows, allowing non-invasive, glimpses into the brood box Queen chamber

A virgin Queen bee will make her maiden flight to the Drone zone and mate with up to eight different Drones, retaining their varied DNA within her distended abdomen. She can live upwards of five years but will be ousted by the colony if she weakens in any way. The bulk of a colony at its peak will weigh in at 50 to 70 thousand strong, this collective organism is comprised mainly of female worker bees, and their average lifespan cycle of six weeks. Males or Drones with their large Queen spotting eyes, have a longer pupating period but shorter life span and can live between 3 – 5 weeks. A quick pass through is the objective for them longer-lived drones are the boys that have failed to mate with a Queen and therefore have poor DNA. Natural selection will determine when the worker bees decide to shove the lazy boys out of the hive. They feed off the resources of the hive, groom themselves in readiness for mating flights, but can’t produce food or honey, they have no stinger, and will perish when pushed out the hive.

DID YOU KNOW
Drones are large furry, handsome boys with massive Queen spotting eyes and have no stinger or ability to forage, they rely entirely on the resources within the hive. The older the drone the less viable his DNA and he will be marginalized by the workers. Female workers act like a democracy and will determine the Queen’s viability, they tend to her every need. Queen bees are distinctive but elusive, they have furry amber legs and a shiny almond shaped abdomen and regenerating stinger. Her attendants, groom and feed her and will immediately protect her if there is any sign of danger.

Gardening with Bees in mind – plant foraging guideline

Consider rewilding an area in your garden by claiming back some of the green desert that is your perfectly manicured lawn. Bees are very efficient and economic with their time; they will forage from the largest and closest plant source. So, keep that in mind and plant enmass; wild grasses like Anthericum with its star like white flowers all year round. Interplanted with stands of Agapanthus and please add block plantings of sacred basil to the outer edges of your boarders. This way the bees will always have easy takeaways from your urban garden.

Rock Roses make excellent watering holes for thirsty bees. As winter presents a dearth for bees, plant up with winter flowering delights. Aloes are a good source of bright orange and red pollen. Remember bees benefit from mass plantings.

REMEMBER; it takes twelve bees to make one teaspoon of Honey. Not every bee knows how to make honey, that is a skill passed on within the hive as they mature. They have to learn how to make honey. Keep that in mind when next you see the cheap and nasty stuff finding its way onto our shelves. Don’t be conned, it costs time and money to produce real honey. We don’t’ have enough bees in this country to supply our own demands. Much of our good honey is sought after and leaving the country to be replaced with cheap and nasty knockoffs, basically Syrup. Real, raw honey does crystalize, how quickly that happens depends on the flowers foraged. Sunflower honey is quick to granulate a multiflora generally not so. Creamed honey favours this natural process.

Local is Lekker. Support your local Beekeepers if you want the real stuff, it is a seasonal delicacy produced by Bees and their Keepers. Honeybees are the only insect that provide humans with a golden food source. A Noble elixir to be revered and preserved as the ancients did.

About the author

Helena is an internationally renowned sculptor, and her work graces many public and private galleries, offices, and homes across the globe. She has a passion for the environment as reflected in many for her sculptures and this is also demonstrated in her inherited passion for bees which has been handed down through generations. Her maternal Opa, Franz Zaman was a Beekeeping legend and established his Apiary in a communal garden in Amsterdam North during the 1930’s -1940’s.

The enforced ‘quiet’ of the Covid 19 pandemic, offered an opportunity for Helena to act on her dream of becoming the keeper of Bees once again and she recently commented on her renewed interest in bees; “On reflection, I muse that perhaps it is they, that have taken me under their wings. Engaging as they are, their cooperative energy has uplifted me, through these unprecedented and challenging times.”

Helena has built a rooftop apiary at her home in Kloof and has been exploring ways of modernising the beekeeping process to make it easier for bees to be kept in relatively small gardens. She has participated in the Kloof Conservancy Indigenous Open Gardens event where she demonstrated her Lego Beehive which is a fully functioning sample of an Auto harvesting hive with observation windows, allowing non-invasive, glimpses into the brood box Queen chamber.

Website: The Bee’s Knees ZA