Look Forward to a Bee-utiful Spring

Sasha Boucher, TNC Animal Care Attendant & Educator As the days start to get longer and warmer and spring bulbs of snowdrops and crocus and daffodil begin to bloom, I look forward to another welcome sign of winter’s end: the return of insects!

Especially the beneficial bees that have been slumbering all winter. As a beekeeper, seeing my girls (all worker bees are female) peek their heads out of their bundled up hive to make exploratory flights around the neighborhood in search of pollen and nectar brings me such joy. Spring is a busy time in the beehive. The bees must clean out the hive and get the comb ready for the queen to resume laying eggs so the hive can expand during the warm months, and to store pollen, nectar and eventually, honey. My job is to make sure they have the space to expand and provide any supplemental resources they may need during early spring’s periodic cold snaps. I also treat against varroa mite – a parasitic mite that can transmit diseases to the bees and weaken the hive.

While I keep bees just for the joy of it, honeybees in commercial apiaries are gearing up to travel the country to pollinate crops like apple, pear, and cherry and many other fruits and vegetables. Beekeepers travel with their hives to farms and orchards across the country, and their worker bees make it possible for us to have peaches and berries and summer veggies and apples in the fall. And don’t forget honey!

Of course, there are challenges to keeping honeybees; due to parasites like varroa mite or resource shortages within the hive, winter hive loss is not uncommon for the hobbyist beekeeper. It is a sad sign of our changing climate that a lawn full of honeybees zooming over the clover is a rare sight these days. Unfortunately, very few wild honeybee colonies are able to survive without some human intervention. We also can’t forget that honeybees are not the only important pollinators that are in danger. Native bees like carpenter bees, mason bees, bumblebees and leaf cutter bees are crucial to the health of everything from our gardens to our global food supplies. These bees don’t live in large colonies like honeybees do, they are solitary species that don’t lend themselves easily to human-led raising. They are suffering profound population decline due to habitat loss, changes in climate and pesticide use. But there are many ways to help these bees (and any honeybees that your neighbors might be keeping) in your own garden.

Avoid pesticides, including anti-mosquito water treatments.

Hang a bee house for mason bees in a place that gets morning sun in your yard.

Leave some borders of loose dirt in your beds or at the edges of your lawn – bumblebees nest in the ground.

Grow native plants to provide a variety of healthy pollen and nectar throughout the summer for all the bees (and other pollinators like butterflies and hummingbirds!)

Support your local beekeepers, or if you’re interested in keeping bees yourself, you can get great information at the Northeast New Jersey Beekeepers Association.

Look Forward to a Bee-utiful Spring

Look Forward to a Bee-utiful Spring

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