It's time for BEE FACTS
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After a rough time with colony collapse disorder in the early 2000s, US honeybee populations have recovered!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/29/bees-boom-colony-collapse/
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But wild bees are still having a rough time!
So some of these bee facts will be about honeybees. And I'll also post some wild bees that I think you will like.
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These little green bees are sweat bees. They're called that because they love salt & might come get some from you if you're sweaty.
They're solitary, sting but not very hard, and most of them nest in bare patches of dirt next to plants.
Plant flowers & leave some bare spots!
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Honeybees are famous for working hard, but if you watch a hive, most of them spend a lot of time just chillin out on the honeycomb.
So when people tell you you gotta "be a good worker bee".... now you know the secret to their work ethic. Secure housing, affordable food, & naps.
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This little chonk is a blue orchard bee! They call em BOBs.
If you need a fruit orchard pollinated in spring, this is the bee for you! Honeybees are ok for that. But BOBs are better able to fly around & do the job in cool, rainy early spring weather.
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Nurse bees!
Honeybees spend the first 2-3 weeks of adulthood feeding larvae. They don't know how to fly or sting yet.
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A hazard of beekeeping: you gotta check yourself carefully & get all the bees back in the hive before you close it up.
If you don't, you might have lost nurse bees wandering around on your clothes all day trying to figure out how to get home
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Taking a quick break- I'll be at the NC State Fair this evening!
I'll be at the Democratic Party booth at 6.30 or 7! We're in the Education building with the quilt & cake decorating exhibits.
Will be back with more Bee Facts tonight ( :
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Bee facts are back! Let's talk about squash bees!
Squash bees only visit flowers of squash, gourd, pumpkin, melon, and cucumber plants.
These plants have big, sticky pollen grains. Squash bees' leg hairs are long & unbranched so they can pick up & carry their pollen.
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Squash bees keep odd hours. They visit flowers before the sun comes up.
Why? We don't know!
But we do know squash bees are WAY better at pollinating squash flowers than honeybees. That's because squash bees' fuzz can pick up squash pollen effectively! Honeybees can't!
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Lots of other bees visit flowers in the squash family: bumblebees, honeybees, etc.
But most of the real pollinating is done by squash bees waaaayyy early in the morning, before any of those other bees wake up.
This is a great example of why farms need wild bees!
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Squash bees nest by digging tunnels down into bare soil- often right under the squash plants they pollinate. Less commute that way.
If you see little piles & tunnels in the dirt around squash plants, it's probably squash bees!
