TO BEE OR NOT TO BEE?

THAT IS THE question….. Or maybe it’s the question we should be asking ourselves, but over a lazy luxurious breakfast in the sun, one morning last week, the question we asked was ‘to weed or not to weed’?

Or when contemplating the weeds on our gravelled area at the entrance of the house, where we park, which has become so overgrown, the question we really asked was ‘to spray or not to spray’?

Otherwise we know it takes hours of back breaking work, just to clear the new growth of weeds (wild flowers) that have sprung up with the recent rain. Well it didn’t take us long to make the decision to spray, just the gravel.

We chose a still, dry day; we used a chemical that said it was harmless to wildlife and pets. Do you always believe what it says on the tin? Well it has certainly ‘cleaned and tidied’ the front of our house.

Unfortunately it also killed a strong young, tree mallow, Lavatera olbia, which was decorative and we wanted keep it, near the edge of the gravel, it was a good shape in the space, we had left several metres clearance when spraying but the drift obviously caught it.

This caused me to wonder what else the spray does, maybe it really isn’t too bad on it’s own, but might become toxic when mixed together with another chemical, a plant food perhaps?

However, I am not complaining because apart from the entrance looking neater, I am glad we decided not to ‘clean the land’ around our olive trees because all this rain has given me, what I have always coveted, as a gardener, terrace after terrace of wonderful wild-flower meadow which are so beautiful and literally buzzing with life.

There are so many diverse wild flowers (weeds) that have flourished this year, in the grass along the terraces, of-course most of the wild plants have found it impossible to recognised my boundaries, and have jumped into the flowerbeds, casting their seeds to the wind, they have taken pride of place amongst the more formal planting and are crowding out some of my valuable ‘hybrid specimens’.

I have always chosen plants that attract insects and bees, because I like to watch them, here are a few plants that are good backbone plants to any flower bed and are currently covered in bees!

I suggest you plant Coronilla Valentina ssp.glauca by your outside seating area, it is a substantial shrub, with heads of bright yellow flowers, that have a glorious perfume, it also produces many seedlings to share with your friends.

Bumble Bees love the tall spikes of blue flowers (in bud at the moment) of Echium Candicans E. fastuosum, this dramatic centrepiece is cousin to the humble herb Borage, where the bees feast regularly in the meadow (see picture).

Lampranthus spectabilis is such a spectacular succulent perennial at the moment, the flowers simply buzz with attention form the bees. (See picture) It spreads beautifully from year to year and is a valuable addition to any garden.

The sound of the insects and smell of damp grassland takes me back to so many holidays or visiting with friends in the country, walking in the bluebell woods or taking a shortcut through a meadow, in the English countryside.

Yet here I am, in my Mediterranean, garden with my very own meadow. Normally I struggle to find enough water just for the garden, the terraces must always fend for themselves, although green in the spring, they have never produced this abundance of wild flowers, each seem covered with bees or insects, sometimes both. Last night the bees were still active at 8 pm when I walked the meadow/terraces with the cats. They work a long day.

THIS AFTERNOON I visited the El Perello Honey Festival, which was really enjoyable. There was much more than honey on show, there were hives and all the tools of the honey trade, of-course as well as stalls full of a large variety of local produce, on sale. There were also plenty of refreshment stalls, as well as a fun-fare, making it a popular family weekend occasion.

Inside the show pavilion, were all the stalls selling honey, the smell, wafting from large open vats, as the honey was ladled into small jars, was intoxicating, and tasted fantastic.

Today, as I sit down to write this article with the delicious taste of honey still lingering, I am reminded that harvesting honey is not the primary activity, our society needs from bees.

Pollination is crucial and of absolute importance for our crops to mature, and for us to enjoy the abundance of food they enable us to take for granted.

THIRTY PLUS YEARS ago, I helped an elderly and rather eccentric flower painter to open her garden to the public her immaculate garden, combining vegetables and wild flowers. These events were very successful. She always managed to raise considerable sums of money, on the entrance fee, tea and cakes, small plants and prints of her published paintings etc., all of which she donated to the protection of the world’s flora.

I asked her why she didn’t give the proceeds to save animals as well, she replied ‘My dear, the cuddly animals will all be irrelevant, if we loose the plants and the pollinators, we will have no animals!

This concept seemed very extreme at the time, although it was decades after Albert Einstein said, ‘If the bees disappear from the surface of the globe, then man would have four years of life left. No more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.

This free services of pollination, provided not just by bees, but a wide variety of insects, contribute to one in three mouthfuls of all food we eat, it is worth millions to the economy each year.

Something like £165 millions per annum in UK, estimated value to the USA economy is 14$ billion!

In April 2008 British Beekeepers were lobbying Parliament for an £8 million research programme to examine reasons for the drop in population of Apis mellifloria, the Honey-bee, particularly in the UK but also worldwide.

At that time, DE.F.R.A the UK organisation responsible for agriculture, couldn’t allocate large sums of money for research, however money has been found now, because even with the economic climate, the impact of the honey bee destruction has become alarming, worldwide.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) was first noticed in the USA in 2006/2007, when worker bees suddenly either disappeared or died. The west coast lost 70% of their bee hives. With an estimate of over million hives that have failed in USA the situation is now critical. This year uncontaminated bees were flown from Canada into California to pollinate their Almond harvest.

But the problem doesn’t stop there; C.C.D. phenomena have spread across other countries, and into Europe. Spain and Portugal are now affected, although it hasn’t yet been recorded in the UK; however the bee population there is very sick and diminishing with no obvious cause.

There have been suggestions that the viruses and bee mites are the cause of the honeybee destruction that have spread from country to country, or harsh modern farming practices, which have been defended to aid cheaper food, and because all chemicals used are deemed ‘safe’, however one researcher has recorded that she was finding a lethal cocktail of up to 42 different types of agro-chemicals in each of the dead bees.

There is also a theory that radiation and microwaves are having a harmful effect, various research programmes are looking at the long term effect of modern technology.

London, the most densely populated and technologically saturated urban areas have, in fact the healthiest bees in UK! My Daughter counted upwards of forty bees feeding on the flowers in her window-box recently.

London bees are thriving and urban beekeepers are trying to work with gardeners and allotment holders to increase the number of hives in the city, to ask gardeners to have a patch of wild flowers in their gardens and resist concreting over large areas.

So next time you sit down to your breakfast, remember – No bees = no bacon, no steak, or coffee or fruit!

What can we, as gardeners here in Catalunya, do to help maintain our healthy population of bees. NOW?

I spoke to several local beekeepers…..

? Resist strimming the grass until there is plenty of other food and habitat for the bees.

? Remember that even though chemicals can be harmless, nixed into a cocktail they are lethal to bees.

? Clean farmland might make collecting olive easier but it causes soil erosion as well as a damaging wildlife habitat.

? Plant lots more herbs, most of which are highly desirable to the bees. See pictures of Calendula and Borage.

? Plant lots of varieties because different types of plants attract different pollinators with different shaped mouth parts.

? Make sure you have varieties of plants that flower throughout the year; many native species have garden hybrids that are very decorative. Bees need food for eight or nine months a year.

? Leave land undisturbed. Grassland and wild flower meadows are a perfect habitat for pollinators. In fact, the ecological importance of wild land next to agricultural land has shown to increase the yield by 20%

? Remember your garden will feed other pollinators, some we want to encourage others we try to kill.

? Butterflies and Moths drink the nectar but the pollen sticks to their legs. Many Beetles feed on nectar, pollen or petals but they inadvertently transfer pollen between flowers.

? Hover-flies and wasps are effective pollinators and even some ants and birds will manage to do a good job,

? However it is the honey-bee who is crucial to commercial food production.

Posted by editor on 2010-04-30 Filed under Home & Garden, May 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry