Try quoting me for real.
Honey bees are in no way necessary to pollinate fruit trees. I have not had honeybees at most sites I manage over the years, and by that, I mean no honeybees in the mix of pollinators, not actual on-site hives. I also have on-site hives at a few orchards. There is no clear difference, in terms of fruit set, between the two.
Explain to me the difference between the flowers in native crabs and European apple flowers. There tends to be different pollinating species that are drawn to different species of fruit but I have no non native fruit trees that don’t attract at least 3 types of native pollinators.
One native fruit I grow, paw paws, never seem tended by anything. I’m guessing there must be some type of moth that feeds on their pollen at night. They too get pollinated somehow.
I have read that honeybees aren’t very attracted to pear blossoms (even though pears come from Europe, at least as their last stop before arriving here) but I have swarming natives all over my pear blossoms every year.
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My last word is I think @MuddyMess_8a got it right.
I think the 40% headline is just the commercial bee industry lobbying the USDA for more funding.
They got 8 million plus 3 million for winter habitat improvement last year.
My guess is 20 million this year.
Once an industry starts sucking on the government tit, its hard to let it go.
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Clint, don’t be absurd. Just because I used certain adjectives to describe one thing, doesn’t mean I used them to describe any other thing to which you care to attribute my adjectives.
Lets get the topic back to bees…
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Scott, you made a beeline! LOL
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That’s very true. At least it is in most places that I know of. The advantage to the grower in an area where there are large amounts of the same type of tree to be pollinated is that the honeys dedicate themselves to a single type of blossom at a time, which keeps appropriate pollen moving along. Other pollinators may go from an apple blossom to a dandelion to some henbit sampling whatever may be available on the bee buffet that day. Also, when someone’s livelihood depends on producing a crop requiring insect pollination, they often want to make certain that sufficient pollinators are there to cover the crop. Commercial producers often don’t want to leave it to chance that the local pollinators will show up in the numbers they need.
When it comes to my own fruit bearing plants, since I only have a limited number of any type, my own 
( honey bees) might as well be honey badgers, because they certainly don’t care. 
They’ve honed in on something else in the area that has caught their attention more strongly.
Scott thank you.
In all things, i’ve often found that until ive walked in those shoes that I cant really accurately fathom the entirety of the subject. Many things in life can be deceptively complex. And that truth is usually somewhere in the middle. And thats how I view this subject. Like so many other subjects that lend themselves to sensationalistic docudramas today…you can see them all over netflix. Monsanto is a evil empire thats taking over the world and is devil incarnate! . Factory farms are dooming everyone!! The bees are dying! Scare scare scare! We seem to need a boogeyman.
I miss the days before everyone was scared of everything.
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I can’t say this for certain, but I imagine that many of the measures that a gardener would do to promote honeybees, would also support native bees. That includes -
Avoid, or at least exercise care with, insecticides.
Grow a diversity of plants that provide nectar and pollen.
Limit stands of pure grass lawn, so that bee habitat is supported instead.
Set an interesting, positive, attractive, example for neighbors and passers by, with a patch of wildflowers, or a wildlife habitat sign issued from the state. Wildflower seeds are readily available in large packages at reasonable prices.
If not wildflowers, then consider shade trees that provide pollen and nectar for bees. That can include, red maple redbud, tupelo, tulip poplar, cabbage palmetto, persimmon, sourwood, black locust (source: University of Georgia), willow, horse chestnut, cherry, basswood, and others (source:USDA)
See the UDSA link above for other helpful measures.
For night time and bathroom reading, here is the US Congressional Research Service report on Bee health.
I certainly welcome data with bee census, either managed honeybee, feral honeybee, or native pollinators. In fact, I would love to see actual data. There is much to learn.
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That may be true for the crops you have in mind in the locations you have in mind (which locations I’m sure are characterized by much greater floral diversity and diversity of landscape (woods and pasture and cropland and orchards and residential/ornamental plants) and much smaller scale than the places where those crops are primarily grown), but in the places where certain crops are primarily grown (and at the scale they’re grown and in the ways and with the herbicides and insecticides they’re grown) there’s a fairly long and significant list for which honeybee pollination is essential to commercial success.
This is proven most obviously by the fact that every almond farmer in California and every pear farmer in the major pear growing districts of Oregon (with the primary exception of those farmers that have smaller orchards adjacent to other orchards whose bee rentals they’re able to take advantage of anyways – which I suspect is also coloring some of your anecdotal impressions, Alan) – and this despite the fact that, as you’ve already said, pears aren’t even especially attracted to pears – and nearly every lowbush blueberry farmer in Maine (with the same kind of exception as with Oregon pears) and every onion seed or carrot seed farmer in central Oregon, etc. pays big money to rent honeybees. I’m sure you don’t believe all those farmers are paying all that money for no significant benefit, but it does seem you’re forming your generalizations about the value of honeybees primarily on the basis of crops and locations where honeybee rental fees are really insignificant. If we’re addressing the question of the value of honeybees as pollinators, doesn’t it make sense to primarily consider those crops and locations where honeybees are mostly being used (rented) as pollinators?
At least you don’t go so far as to pretend that your food supply and whole lifestyle could continue independent of the whole system of modern agri-business (to which belong the farms that most commonly rent the most honeybee colonies for pollination.) But while that system may find its leading examples of honeybee pollination in specialty crops like almonds or lowbush blueberries, we’re talking here just as much about neonicitinoids being used on major commodity crops like corn, canola, soybeans, cotton… and all sorts of suburban applications, too. In other words, we’re talking about a system affected fundamentally by all the kinds of tangential measures Bear just listed and all sorts of others besides.
The huge problem I see with all of Bear’s suggestions, however, is that they would apply to most of us in the places where most of us live, but only a tiny percentage of our agricultural footprint is in any of the various places where most of us live. I would guess that what any one person could do with his one suburban lot would have very little impact on the native pollinator population even in his neighborhood (including whatever he might grow on his own lot), and it would have no effect at all on native pollinator populations in the places where most of his food (and the seed crops to grow that food, etc.) is actually being grown. To be fair, Bear does point out the need to set an example for the whole neighborhood, so he’s clearly talking about instigating broader changes, but I think it’s easy to grossly exaggerate the compatibility of those broader changes with modern ways of life that we’re not about to even consider changing. I think Bear has made a modest and defensible argument, but when others suggest that what works for a tiny percentage of our diets in our hobby backyards apart from any regular bottom line accountability can and should be normative for commercial production, then we’re talking about a model that would only substantially work for those that would choose a radically different and “backwards” lifestyle (and even that may not be possible when everyone around us chooses otherwise.)
There are communities, even cities where many citizens are serious about making changes to support pollinators. In Seattle they are creating swaths of native vegetation called Pollinator Pathways linking larger green belt expanses. Lawns are shrinking and disappearing to be replaced with food and native plantings. I think we will continue to see shrinking lawns with water shortages. City and suburban areas have pea patches which donate extra food to food banks. High rises have rooftop gardens and beehives even in NYC.
There are organic farms within thirty miles that sell to natural food stores, farmers markets, and by subscription. So many of us are making changes and it is not a tiny percent as you suggest Eric. I’m sure you didn’t intend offense at calling this a “backwards lifestyle” but it does feel disrespectful to those who are trying to make a positive difference.
Muddy, I expect most fruit growers are completely aware that fruit trees in a home orchard setting don’t usually require honey bees for pollination, but Drew kept referring to common species fruit trees not being native and therefore probably being dependent on the non-native honey bee. Had to say something.
I work for a couple of commercial fruit growers and one small apple producer has the same complaint as you of his honey bees. Unfortunately his carpenter bees aren’t interested in his apple orchard either and in spite of my hard work over the last 5 or 6 years of pruning to produce massive fruiting wood on trees planted too close together, he is still not getting reliable production from trees that are throwing out plenty of flowers.
a good example of the uselessness of anecdotal evidence just came up. Bob and I both had a number of Romance series cherry trees. His Carmine jewels died, and the others were fine. Whereas the others all died for me, and Carmine Jewels (2 of them) are fine. What does this tell us? Right, nothing, it tells us nothing.
Anyway the attempts to minimize the usefulness of honeybees has failed so far to convince me.
Drew, I actually thought I was speaking to Muddy privately, not that I was trying to talk behind your back but just so he knew the intent of my comment.
I don’t think anyone is underrating the general importance of honeybees and I am only saying that fruit trees are not particularly in need of their unique qualities as a pollinator just because the fruit species we grow are usually not native.
Look at the non-native plants in your garden and tell me how many different native pollinators you see tending to them.
I guessed too low.
2015 48 million
2016 82 Million
I try to post topics that I think will benefit others. I have learned from others, and learned a few things myself. Sharing successes and failures is a way to pay it forward.
To make a bee meadow, we covered the ground with large sheets of black plastic. We held the plastic in place with rocks, cinder blocks, and bricks. After about 3 or 4 months, we removed the plastic. The grass was dead, most of the grass roots composted in situ, and the soil was easy to work with shovel and garden rake. We turned the soil over once, raked relatively smooth. Then we poured wildflower seeds into a canister that worked like a salt shaker, that originally held organic slug pellets. We used that to sprinkle the seeds on the prepared ground, like salting the morning scrambled eggs. Rain and time took care of the rest.
These photos are from today. The wildflower mix was prepared for NW, which is where I live. This meadow is in its second year, and most of the current flowers are perennials. I don’t know all of the types - obviously lots of California poppies, lupines, other poppies, sweet Williams, and many I don’t know. I added some snap dragons and Shirley poppies to the mix for color. I also added Phacelia to the mix, because I read that is good bee forage. I have separate patches of meadowfoam, phacelia, borage, and crimson clover, for experiments.
Walking around today, and on most days, the most obvious activity is bumblebees. There are also small bees that I don’t know how to identify. I have two beehives, but they seem to be foraging further afield. It was actually hard to find honeybees in the meadow today, even though they were a big part of my motivation for installing the meadow.
We like the meadow so much, we are planning to expand it. I think I will take out grass between my fruit trees, within the rows, and have wildflowers instead. I will keep a row of grass between each row of trees, so I have something to walk on.
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Daniel, this is a beautiful post.
I think you should cut and past it as a new topic.
title it something like.
How to make a bee meadow.
Then It will show in google for anyone searching on the topic of bee meadows.
Thank you for writing and sharing the photos it is inspirational.
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