Simple Suggestion #204... Be nice to bees

It's a late spring, and our bees are awake and hungry -- I've seen a few buzzing around my yard looking for sustenance. Fortunately, my first dandelions are blooming, with many more to come because I refuse to use chemicals in my yard, preferring to dig them out. And this year, my concern for my little bumbling buddies is reaching an anxiety level such that I'm not going to dig for a while, though I will pull off the seed heads. Dandelions are an excellent source of food for bees, at least until other things start to bloom.

It's been another hard winter for apiary colonies, and between colony collapse disorder, parasites, and pesticide use, bees could use a break and a little help from us to leave their food sources alone, and to plant more to help them out.

So today's challenge is to think about our little yellow and black pollinators and hold off on our need for a weedless yard, avoiding pesticides at all cost, and even leaving those dandies for a bit... at least until our fruit bearing trees are in bloom -- and other things that can support our bees.

Look at how much they do for us -- and don't forget to thank a honey bee today!

Not sure where this graphic originates, but what would we do without bees??

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The bee's knees

Suzanna has always had a soft spot for injured or unwell animals... or creatures in danger. She's the one who came to me with a mouse held in her garden gloves, before Chloe, the neighbourhood cat, could catch it as it scampered from leaf pile to leaf pile on the road past our house. If a bird hits our window, Suzanna will put it into a little box and sit nearby until it regains its senses and flies away.

So I wasn't surprised when she called me to the back step the other day, and showed me a bee that wasn't moving very much. "How can I help him?" she asked.

I shook my head. I've been finding more dead bees than I like in our yard lately... done in by exhaustion? Pesticides? Colony collapse disorder? Genetically modified plants? Parasites? Our little pollinator friends have so many enemies... humans and our farming/gardening practices being the worst. I'm heartened by the fact that so many people are starting to realize the importance of bees (if you want to see what your produce department would look like without them, click here). The necessity of reducing pesticides and GMOs is becoming more and more obvious to Joe and Jane Public, but I fear that our actions to fix what's broken may not be enough to save our pollinators from extinction. Just yesterday I heard another report about the decimation of bee colonies in Ontario. I haven't the heart to look for Alberta apiary reports because I suspect I already know what my back yard is telling me.

The bee Suzanna showed me seemed to be on his last legs. Actually, he was missing one. I shrugged and said I didn't think there was much she could do, but she wouldn't give up. She went into the house, warmed a bit of honey, and drizzled it on the step beside him. I took a garden fork and gently pushed him to a droplet, and he began to eat, or at least we think that's what he was doing, his little proboscis sucking up the stickiness. I told my girl that though I didn't think it was enough to restore him to health, at least he'd die happy, with a full belly.

Suzanna kept vigil with him for quite some time, before I picked him up with a trowel and carried him to our lupins, where he clung tightly. When I went to check on him later, he was gone, and I couldn't find any fuzzy bee carcasses on the ground...

Though I have my doubts about his survival, I marvel at my girl and her compassion for all God's creatures. For the bees' sake, her sake, and the sake of all our kids, we need to do everything we can to protect our fuzzy little yellow and black friends. So put away your Raid, and get rid of your Black Flag. Our bees and our future generations are counting on us.

I think Suzanna is the bee's knees. As are our bees, our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren...

Simple Suggestion #121... Put up a wasp scarer

They're back. Yes, those yellow and black plagues that take the pleasure out of barbecues, picnics, and sometimes even compost piles. I'm referring to wasps, of course. I noticed one buzzing around my composter this morning and was reminded immediately of last summer...

We were about to leave on holidays when I noticed the critters going under my new birthday present, our three bin composter. So my wonderful husband got geared up, took some chemicals known as a wasp bomb that we had left over from previous years, and out he went to wage war, successfully, he thought. Then off we went on vacation that very day.

About halfway through our holidays, I thought to call home and ask my dad if the wasps had left... and if they hadn't, would he be so kind as to call an exterminator? He did, and fortunately, the exterminator's fee of $50 included a guarantee -- because when we got home at the beginning of August, the wasps were still acting as if they owned that composter. Mr. exterminator paid us one more visit, nice young man, and that was that.

I don't want to go through that rigamarole again this year... so today I went out and put up a half dozen of my famous wasp scarers (read: brown paper lunchbags, a package of 100 is less than $5) in strategic spots around the yard. (I forgot to last year, and you know what happened!)

Wasps are territorial, so they won't nest if there's another nest nearby. They also aren't too good at determining whether a brown paper bag is a nest or not. So you don't have to buy one of those fancy wasp deterrents that use more resources than a paper bag even though they really are glorified bags with fancy wire frames and cost about $13 (I know, they are much prettier than my paper bags). In the picture above, you can see that I've situated one of my wasp scarers on this side of my composter wall. There's one on the other side, too, because that's where our trash cans sit, and I don't want wasps bothering my garbage guys, either. As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure... and what's even better is this is a chemical free way to keep the wasps away and save the bees. It's all about living simply, so that others (wasps in particular) can simply live... ELSEWHERE!

Go ahead, try it! Another simple idea that works.

P.S. See the other 100+ Simple Suggestions here.