The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Making a home for bees
Bee houses are an effective way to draw wild species to your garden.
Gardening is most rewarding when you take the time to look. That gnat on the chervil flower may be a tiny wasp that is obligingly pollinating the bloom.
I find these small, harmless wild bees and wasps enormously entertaining as they flit about and feed on nectar and pollen. I can’t distinguish all the species, but I know they are valuable and of no bother to me. Moreover, I draw great satisfaction in feeling that I have helped create an environment where these winged wonders can thrive.
Other gardeners go further, and they put out nesting tubes for bees — bee houses or bee nesting boxes or bee hotels, call them what you will — and they are an effective way to draw certain bee species to your domain.
There are pitfalls and there is disagreement, too, as to how they should be managed, but on balance bee houses offer a great way to invite this hidden universe into your landscape. At the very least, putting a bee house in your garden offers a constructive and educational distraction from pandemic blues, especially in households with young children.
The bee house ranges from something as simple as a few hollow reeds bundled together to elaborate framed structures that you can buy. And yes — unlike slotted butterfly houses (remember those?) — they actually work.
Everyone is familiar with honeybees, an Old World bee long established in North America, but the bees that are drawn to bee houses are principally species of mason and leafcutter bees.
There are approximately 3,600 species of wild bee in the United States.
The most conspicuous type of these, the beleaguered bumblebee, doesn’t inhabit bee houses but nests together in the ground, old mouse nests and even tussocks of grass.
For the most part, wild bees “are small, they’re dark and they’re in the background,” says Jennifer Hopwood, a conservation specialist with the Xerces Society. “But they’re still out there, and it’s important to support them when we can.”
Most wild bees nest in such terrestrial places, but about a quarter of them inhabit tunnels in decaying wood, fallen logs or in hollowed-out stems, making them potential tenants for the bee house, says David Mizejewski, a naturalist with the National Wildlife Federation and author of “Attracting Birds, Butterflies and Other Backyard Wildlife.”
These bees are solitary; they
For months now, health experts have been telling us that wearing masks, along with social distancing when near one another, is our best protection against COVID-19.
Too many of us didn’t listen. They warned our elected officials that reopening too soon would bring a resurgence like nobody’s business.
We still didn’t listen. We had to get the economy humming again.
Well, it looks like the chickens have come home to roost, and that saying that a hard head makes for, ahem, a soft bottom is so true.
If that sounds celebratory, like an I told you so, it isn’t. Far from it.
I’m just sad, really. Sad to think that I could be cooped up in my home, away from the people I love, the things I love far longer than any of us thought.
Instead of celebrating a return to the office, attending Sunday church services in person, gathering with members of my Sunday school class and choir members, nothing seems certain anymore, well, except more COVID-19 cases. And death.
There are more than 10 million cases of COVID-19 and a half a million deaths — that means 1 in 20 people who have contracted the virus have died worldwide. Across the country, the number of infections has surpassed 2.6 million cases and more than 127,000 deaths. And in Georgia, where cases are surging again, there were more than 84,000 confirmed