Save The Honey Bee

It has been well documented that the health and numbers of honey bees and many native bee species is under threat globally. There are a number of things that you can do at your own home to help to try and maintain bee numbers in your local environment.

Plant bee friendly trees and plants - If you aim to attract honeybees, you’ll need bee-friendly flowers that produce ample amounts of pollen and nectar. Most modern ornamentals, such as hybrid roses, no longer produce enough pollen and nectar to attract bees - if a blossom doesn’t provide enough pollen or nectar, bees will totally ignore it. For the best bee lures plant old-fashioned or heirloom varieties. Research has shown that gardens with 10 or more bee-friendly plant types host the most bee visitors.

It is important to plant flowers that bloom at different times of the year so that there is always sources of pollen available. Also, plant some rows of bushes close together to create ideal honey bee habitats. Below is a list of bee friendly plants.

Trees: Alders, Apples and crabapples, Cherries, Cotoneaster, Hazelnuts, Lime, Maples, Oaks, Orange, Peaches, Pears, Plums, Persimmons, Sycamores, Tupelos, Viburnum, Willows

Shrubs: Abelias, Butterfly bushes, Blackberries, Blueberries, Crape myrtle, Elderberries, Flowering quinces, Fuchias, Gorse (if you are so inclined), Hebe, Sumacs, Wild or old fashioned roses

Perennials/annuals: Alyssum, Bee balm, Basil, Borage, Catmint, Chives, Cosmos, Globe thistles, Lambs’ ears, Lavenders, Oreganos, Pot Marigold, Sages, Salvias, Summer phlox, Carrot, Rosemary, Thymes

Provide Water – Bees need to drink too. Place a saucer of water in the garden – place pebbles or twigs and bracken in the water so the bee has something to stand and climb on to prevent it from drowning. Wet sand is another good option for providing a supply of moisture that is safe for bees to drink from.

Spray carefully – Use bee friendly sprays.

Many common lawn and garden chemicals are lethal to bees, while others may weaken their immune systems, allowing parasites, disease or other stresses to finish them off. Sprays that contain neonicotinoids have repeatedly been linked to bee losses (see below). When using bee friendly sprays, spray in the late evening once bees have gone to bed for the night.

Contact your local beekeepers association if you see a swarm – they will send a local beekeeper out to collect it who will then look after it.

Help Protect Bee Habitat
Advocate for smart growth and sensible limits to development where you live and support planting of wildflowers and native vegetation in your local community.
Don’t swat bees – do not squash honey bees when they land on you or you see them near by. Unlike wasps bees can only sting once. When they do sting they die as a result, therefore they only sting as a last resort mechanism to protect against threats. If you don’t swat at bees and don’t squash them they won’t sting you.

Why neonicotinoids are bad for bees – The U.K. Soil Association have produced this informative article to which we have provided a link below.
A third of UK bee colonies have been lost over the last two years and there have been many explanations given for this. There is strong evidence that neonicotinoids – a class of pesticide first used in agriculture in the mid 1990s at exactly the time when mass bee disappearances started occurring – are involved in the deaths. The evidence against these chemicals is strong enough that they have been banned or suspended in France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia – but not yet in the UK.

Neonicotinoids work as an insecticide by blocking specific neural pathways in insects’ central nervous systems. The chemicals impair bees’ communication, homing and foraging ability, flight activity, ability to discriminate by smell, learning, and immune systems – all of which have an impact on bees' ability to survive.

Read More >

Domestic Sprays that contain neonicotinoids - Neonicotinoid pesticides have been linked to the dramatic collapse in bee numbers over the last decade. Many domestic gardening products on sale in hardware stores and garden centres contain these chemicals.
If you're buying any kind of pest control check the ingredients – anything that contains acetamiprid, imidacloprid, thiacloprid or thiamethoxam should be avoided.

Here is a link to our August 2012 newsletter which gives more detail on specific sprays available in the New Zealand market place http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=7df3be99e0f20a664310c4f9e&id=10fdf25ffe&e=

Consumer magazine have also looked into this issue for the public. Their Dec 2012/Jan 2013 article can be found here http://www.consumer.org.nz/reports/bees-and-insecticides

Last flight of the honeybee? – This article for the Guardian by Alison Benjamin delivers an informative look into the multiple factors facing the honeybee on an international level. Luckily, here in New Zealand beehives to not get moved large distances for pollination and monoculture is a not an issue, but it does highlight why colony collapse disorder may have hit the US so hard and addresses the fact that this is a multifactorial problem.

A bee-less world wouldn't just mean the end of honey - Einstein said that if the honeybee became extinct, then so would mankind. Alison Benjamin reports on a very real threat.

Dave Hackenberg's bees have been on the road for four days. To reach the almond orchards of California's Central Valley, they pass through the fertile plains of the Mississippi, huge cattle ranches and oilfields in Texas, and the dusty towns of New Mexico on their 2,600-mile journey from Florida. The bees will have seen little of the dramatic landscape, being cooped up in hives stacked four high on the back of trucks. Each truck carries close to 500 hives, tethered with strong harnesses and covered with black netting to prevent the millions of passengers from escaping. When the drivers pull over to sleep, the bees have a break from the constant movement and wind speed, but there's no opportunity to look around and stretch their wings.