clarissa wrote:
Hi to all gardeners Does anyone have any suggestions on how to
entice bees to increase their numbers? What flowers do they
particularly like? Do those little bee houses actually work? I no
longer use insecticides - except on rare occasions when a prized
plant is about to succumb - and then only such specific things as
bacillus thuringensis for caterpillers and spray only that
particular
spot where the nasties are. Could even this small amount of spray be
too much for the bees? I even dug up all the roses that seemed to
have black spot all the time. I have a lot of flowers in summer and
despite being in my garden everyday for a couple of hours, I only
see about 5 bees a summer. Can home gardens help bees in some way
or
has the problem originated in some area other than than residential
yards? Thanks for any suggestions

I don't know if you're aware of it but there seems to be a honeybee
crisis--exactly what the cause of it might be and how widespread it is
seems to be a matter of some debate, with some holding that it's
mostly the bees in big commercial operations that get trucked all over
Creation and others holding that it's all honeybees, and with various
causes claimed, from BT crops to the alignment of the stars.

Bee houses are intended to attract mason bees, not honeybees. Whether
they work or not I dunno--you can buy mason bees though, but this
isn't the right time of year and they may be hard to find. If you
google "Mason Bees" you'll find quite a lot of information about how
to attract them and how to use bee houses. If you google "Mason bee
sales" you'll find a number of suppliers including some in Canada.

Something to try--set out some unpainted cedar posts--I don't know how
it works in Canada but in Florida if there are carpenter bees around
they'll dig right into those. If you nail them to a wall under an
overhang so they stay dry that seems to make a difference.

If you want a large and stable population and are willing to put some
work into it, you could raise honeybees.

Do you mulch heavily? If so that can make it difficult for many kinds
of bee to find nesting ground (a lot of them live in holes in the
ground and can't dig through a lot of mulch).

Google "bee garden" and you'll find a good deal of advice on what
species of plants attract bees.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)