Please be responsible for your own actions and words, and avoid blaming others or making excuses for your behavior. If you make a mistake, apologize and take steps to correct it.
- Manlobbi
Personal Finance Topics / Macroeconomic Trends and Risks
No. of Recommendations: 5
No. of Recommendations: 7
Thank you for sharing this. Improving honey bee health has Macroeconomic impact due to the need for pollination of much of our food supply.
In addition to the economic impact, I'm very glad that honey bees may receive improved nutrition. It's deplorable how honey bees are exploited by driving hives hundreds of miles to pollinate crops while the owners "harvest" - i.e. steal -- their honey and feed them low-nutrition cheap substitutes like corn syrup.
Honeybees have personalities, an ability to learn from each other and from experience, and a democratic society when allowed to be free. (cf. the wonderful book, "Honeybee Democracy.")
On the other hand, honeybees (Apis mellifera) are European-derived domestic animals. Honeybee hives can have 30,000 individuals which compete with and crowd out native bees that do not form large hives. The article does mention this.
I have been a citizen-scientist volunteer with the Pacific Northwest Bumblebee Atlas for 8 years. The Atlas tracks native bumblebee species. I once surveyed a commercial lavender farm which had (I estimated) 100 honeybees for every 10 yellow-headed bumblebee (Bombus vosnesenskii) and only ONE western bumble bee (B. occidentalis) individual.
I sincerely hope that the honey bee supplement will be commercialized. If so, I might buy some myself and put a feeding station into my garden for my bumblebees.
Wendy
No. of Recommendations: 1
I don't have much luck with pollinator garden plantings, but the Redbud trees in our woods are popular for a couple of weeks in the spring with Bumble bees, other wild bees, and a small butterfly or skipper that won't sit still long enough for me to identify.
No. of Recommendations: 5
Plant herbs, such as lavender, oregano, rosemary, thyme, borage, sage and catnip and let them flower. Plant fruit trees. Plant berries, such as blueberries and raspberries. Plant goldenrod. Bumblebees will come to these. They aren't hard to grow.
Go to local plant nurseries and follow the bees. I recently bought Penstemon 'Catherine de la Mare' because the plant was literally buzzing with bumblebees at a plant nursery. I'm propagating it from stem cuttings which will come true to variety and are easier than growing from seed.
Wendy
No. of Recommendations: 7
Plant herbs, such as lavender, oregano, rosemary, thyme, borage, sage and catnip and let them flower.
Thyme is stupid easy to grow. I took a starter from Lowes, stuck it in the ground and left for vacation. 3 years later it had spread to fill the bed. Flowers are quite demurely pretty, not a showy plant, and the bees absolutely love it. Doesn't climb, so it's invasiveness is moderate, as long as you are not looking for an English Garden kind of approach.
Best of all it's great for us too. I just nuke a mug of water and snip some herbs off to make a tea, (wash first, throw in hot water and steep.) Antibacterial and antiviral properties, as well as tasting good. I do the same with rosemary and sage, and of course, ginger root. I prefer the taste of the lemon thyme over regular, though I am happy with either.
IP,
looking to pick up some pineapple sage this year
No. of Recommendations: 4
Thyme is stupid easy to grow. I took a starter from Lowes, stuck it in the ground and left for vacation. 3 years later it had spread to fill the bed. Flowers are quite demurely pretty, not a showy plant, and the bees absolutely love it.
Oregano is also stupid easy to grow, at least here in zone 9a/8b. I use it for groundcover. I use it both fresh and dry it. Bees spend a lot of time in the oregano beds.
The bomb for bees though, is sage. Bumblebees go mad for it. My plants are covered with bumblebees when they flower.
No. of Recommendations: 2
When you see a bumblebee, photograph it and post it to
https://www.bumblebeewatch.org/Even if you don't provide the detailed data collected by the Bumblebee Atlas, every documented observation adds to knowledge of bumblebee populations.
Wendy
