Question from Andy:

Answer from Pat:
Dear Andy:

You are not the only gardener who has told me they had a low number of fruit on melons on each plant last year. My guess is you didn’t have enough bees in your garden to adequately pollinate your plants. The first question I have is did you see any bees? Bees are having a problem in many areas. (See other Q&A’s on this blog for more details.) Since you didn’t get many melons last year, you will need to watch for bees this year and if they do not appear, then take their place yourself.

Early in the season you will only see male flowers and no female flowers on most varieties of melon, pumpkins, and squash. After a while female flowers will emerge also. (Male flowers have a thin green stem beneath the flower; female flowers have a miniature fruit at the base.) Once female flowers begin to emerge, make sure bees are present also or you will get no fruit. Melons are often pollinated by bumble bees. If you see no bumblebees or honeybees, you will need to pollinate the flowers by hand or use an attractant such as a trademarked ribbon called BeeBow made especially to attract bees. Just tie it onto the plants so that bees flying overhead will get the hint to make a beeline for your plants. Planting a bed a zinnias near your vegetable garden and allowing some earth to be bare without a covering of mulch, are other ways to attract and keep bumblebees, particularly, in your garden. A bed of wildflowers will also help keep bees in your garden along with other benefic ials.

If even these steps fail to attract bees to your garden, then go out early in the morning as soon as the dew has dried and play like a bee. To do this, use a dry, sable, watercolor brush, twirl it around inside the male blossoms picking up the pollen and then go do the same with the female blossoms so you deposit the pollen on the stamen inside them. Another way to do this is to pick a male blossom and remove its petals, then rub the exposed, rode-like, pollen-covered center of the flower, called the stamen, onto the sticky knoblike center of the female blossom, called the stigma, so the pollen sticks to it. After a female blossom is pollinated, its petals will close up and shrivel and the ovary will begin to expand into a fruit. You can then have a much larger harvest, since all well pollinated fruits should mature.

Related posts:

1. Stop blossoms from dropping off tomatoes
2. Pollinating by Hand
3. Don’t Thin Out Apple Blossoms

Question from Tandy:

Answer from Pat:
Yes it certainly is worthwhile encouraging mason bees, sometimes called the orchard mason bees, to set up housekeeping in your garden, particularly if you have a fruit orchard. Orchard mason bees (Osmia lignaria), are members of the Megechilid family of insects. They are gentle, beneficial, native bees prevalent in most parts of USA. They look a bit like small flies and their bodies are shiny blue with black legs. The males have long black antennae, and both males and females have black or gray hairs on their shoulders and bellies which make them good pollinators, especially of deciduous fruit trees. These bees are slightly smaller than honey bees. They make their homes in wood, for example in existing nail holes, knot holes, and crevasses, such as on the trunks of trees or in holes under the siding of homes or garden fences. They do not drill holes, like carpenter bees, but they clean out existing holes and then lay eggs that hatch into larvae.

Children also may be fascinated to learn about wild beneficial bees and thus not become afraid of them when there is no need for fear. On page 280 and 281 of my organic book I discuss several types of wild bees, including the mason bee, that are good to have in gardens. Orchard mason bees are actually better pollinators than honeybees especially since they pollinate in colder weather when honeybees are inside their hives trying to keep warm by buzzing. People who raise mild-climate apples, such as ‘Anna’ need the help of orchard mason bees especially since ‘Ana Apples’ often bloom in winter when temperatures are too cold for honeybees.

You can purchase blocks of wood that have been drilled with holes for orchard bees to nest in, but it’s best to purchase the larvae and install them into the blocks at the correct time of year. Just purchasing the blocks without the larvae may never attract orchard bees. Nonetheless, they may exist in your garden and perhaps you have never noticed them.

Related posts:

1. Please Help Save the Bees Pt 2
2. Why Did I Get So Few Melons? (Pollination of Melon Plants, by Hand or By Bees)
3. Please Help Save the Bees Pt 1

Question from Alice:

Answer from Pat:
I sympathize and feel for your cry of distress and dismay. Not only was the extermination that you saw deadly to bees it was also dangerous to people who were exposed to pesticide while eating a meal. I agree that something needs to be done to prevent such unwise and cruel practices, and a law needs to be passed to prevent the killing bees with pesticides. However, I am fully aware that I am not an activist, I am a writer. They say the pen is mightier than the sword. My task is to write and let people know the facts, but my task is not to go to Sacramento and get a new law passed. Someone who is a natural-born activist needs to take up the cause of bees and champion it and get laws passed that will protect them. Perhaps you are the one to speak to legislators and to bee keepers and to pass laws to protect bees. When I was a child in England I met a man called Grey Owl who saved the beavers in Canada from extinction by becoming a legislator and getting laws passed to save the beavers from the trappers. Our domestic bees need a new Grey Owl.

We need to realize also that the main dangers to bees are not the occasional cases in which they are sprayed. The worst dangers that we humans are inflicting on bees are the pesticides, such as imidachloprid (or Merit), that are saturating our environment. Imidachloprid, for example, is included in lawn fertilizers for the purpose of killing white grubs in lawns by confusing them so they cannot continue their normal life functions, but imidachloprid is a systemic thus it gets into trees and flowers frequented by bees and this is causing CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) a disease of bees that confuses them so they cannot find their hives. The Bayer Company and other pesticide companies are the villains since they will not admit their products are harming bees and unfortunately it’s difficult to prove. The companies that are making pesticides are also killing our children and giving them cancer and giving a lot of adults cancer also. So it’s not just bees that are being harmed by our unwise practices. Mankind is going so far over the line of what is wise that we may soon exterminate our entire human race. If we do that, the world will then heal itself. I am not worried about the planet. It is resilient, but I am worried about the future of the human race and of some of the animals and other creatures we are likely to destroy along with ourselves.

You are right “No one cares.” The fact that people don’t care comes from ignorance and in the case of companies, from greed. Companies have to make money so that their stock goes up in value. Thus they surge ahead to do whatever they can to make money without considering the side effects or consequences of what they do. You were right to go and complain. The company owning the facility was in fact not protecting their clientele. Instead, they were exposing people to pesticide. Bees don’t attack people unless they are Africanized bees that have been provoked. Also, spraying bees can actually result in an attack. There have been more than one case in which an ignorant man sprayed feral bees and the bees attacked the man who sprayed the hive and they killed him. So I cannot see that spraying is a safe thing to do and it is not a good way to protect the public. The correct way to remove a feral bee hive or a swarm of bees is to subdue them with smoke, usually at dusk, and then get the queen and put her in a box and the other bees will follow.

I wish I could tell you the proper way to proceed on this. I wish I had a good idea how you could help. My only thought is that being an informed person yourself you are doing good and spreading the word. Once again, I deeply sympathize with your point of view.

Related posts:

1. Please Help Save the Bees Pt 1
2. Please Help Save the Bees Pt 2
3. What to Do if You Find a Bee Swarm

Question from Rebecca:

Is that the correct name? And do you have a link to where I could find it online?

Answer from Pat:
The contact number and address for Bee Bows is email:  info@mybeebow.com or address: P.O. Box 864, Ellensburg, WA 98926. Or phone: 509/251-4904.

Related posts:

1. Humic Acid

Question From Jeanne:

Answer from Pat:
I can see how you might be very nervous having a bee swarm on your screen door, but yes, they might leave at dusk. Then they will be someone else’s problem. (In the meanwhile, they do not constitute a hazard for now and I hope you have another door so you can go in and out of your house.) What would be bad would be if the bees found a hole under the eaves of your house and went into the walls. I hope that does not happen. I suggest you try to contact someone today even though it is Sunday.

If a bee keeper came to your home he would subdue the bees with smoke. Dusk is a good time to do this since the bees are more subdued at dusk anyway. He would then find the young queen inside the swarm and take this young queen out from the middle of the swarm and put her into a cardboard box. He would then sit around and wait until the bee swarm would follow the young queen into the box. Then he would close the box and carry it away.

That’s all there is to it, but bee keepers also have protective clothing and they have been slowly subjected to bee stings so they have developed an immunity to them. (Bee stings are beneficial since bee keepers usually do not suffer from arthritis as result. Bee stings are a cure for arthritis.)

There is a man in San Diego County, Pete Holtzen, Honey Bee Rescue, 619/286-7258 (or www.honeybeerescue.com) who takes bees away, but he may charge for this. Ask him his charges. In my opinion it is well worthwhile to pay the cost of having a knowledgeable bee keeper come to one’s home and have some assurance that the keeper will keep the bees and not waste the swarm. Don’t use pesticides to get rid of bees. Pest companies kill bees with Sevin. We should not kill bees, and also pesticides such as Sevin are broad-spectrum pesticides. They kill other things in the environment. You do not want pesticides used around your home or screen door where people, animals, and beneficial insects and arachnids can be affected.

Pete keeps the bees instead of destroying them. Some bee keepers think of swarming bees as “junk bees.” There are no junk bees. We need all the bees we can get and should save swarms and not kill these highly beneficial creatures who help us all stay alive on this planet Earth. Thank you very much for writing to my blog and getting the facts on this matter. Isn’t it funny how emergencies always seem to happen on weekends? I wish you luck and hope you can still enjoy the humor and interest of this situation.

Related posts:

1. What to Do if You Find a Bee Swarm
2. More Bees
3. Please Help Save the Bees Pt 1

Can you give us a good tip on how regular folks who are amateur gardeners or just want to maintain a nice lawn, can identify the good bees  from the bad ones? I believe  most people just find it easier to grab a can of wasp and hornet killer,  not realizing the damage that does to the good bees.

Also, you mention that if you don’t see any bee activity in February, your tree may not bear fruit. For which types of trees is hand pollination most feasible,  it’s  seems  like a daunting task. Any additional tips or comments are greatly appreciated.

A: Hand pollination takes much less time than you might imagine. After receiving this email, I did a sample test to see how long it takes me to pollinate citrus blossoms. It is possible on dwarf lemon or orange tree to stand next to the tree and pollinate as many as one hundred blossoms in five minutes. Using a small sable paint brush to go from blossom to blossom dabbing and swirling the brush into each one, a human being can go faster than bees. So if you were to spend 5 minutes a day for a week pollinating the blossoms on your dwarf citrus, (and also water and fertilize appropriately) you could expect 700 lemons or oranges a few months later. If a citrus tree were taller, you would need a three-legged orchard ladder, you could move it from place to place and maybe spend ten or fifteen minutes a day on the task, and might end up with thousands of fruit. (All folks with taller fruit trees need to have one of these three-legged ladders in order to prune and care for their fruit trees and harvest fruit safely. I have had one for many years and we use it frequently for garden tasks. Four-legged ladders are unsteady on uneven ground and can cause accidents.)

On page 126 of my book I describe methods for hand-pollinating cherimoya, which requires two steps since you must collect the pollen at night and spread it the next day. I explain carefully in the book why this is so and how to do the job. A tiny night-flying wasp or moth actually performs this service in wild places where cherimoya is native but not here. Gardeners who spend a few minutes pollinating ten or twenty cherimoya blossoms once a week year-round, as I describe in my book, will have an abundant harvest of these expensive fruits year round, not just in fall and not just a few fruits as happens otherwise. (These trees bear blossoms in waves of bloom year round.)

I also explain there how to hand pollinate quince and guava trees either by hand or with a long-handled duster. I demonstrated all these tasks many years ago on a television show I had in those days on Channel 39 (NBC) in San Diego. Some months later the owners of the guava tree got back to me in fall and said they had such an abundant harvest of delicious fruit that they were eating all they could and giving bags away. They had never had more than one or two fruits prior to that year. From now on they said they would always use a feather duster to pollinate as I had done and wanted to know where I got mine. I still have it today. It is a piece of Australian sheep’s fleece glued onto a long stick so as to make a light-weight cylinder of shaggy fleece that easily picks up the abundant pollen on guava and spreads it around like a cloud of dust. I stood on my three-legged ladder to do this job. I took it along with me in the back of my car as I often did in those days, driving around with that ladder sticking out the back with a red flag on it!

You also might notice the Anna apples on the front cover of my book. I hand pollinated the apple blossoms that later became those very fruits. There were few bees that winter and only a few blossoms on the Dorset apple tree I had planted for cross-pollination (‘Ein Schemer’ is a better tree to use as a pollinator for Anna), so instead of waiting for the bees I did the job myself. I only did it once that year and it only took a few minutes. When Anna apples are long and skinny and not plump as they should be, they have no seeds inside. This is a sign they have not been properly cross-pollinated with another apple variety.

Regarding bees and wasps, there are no bad bees. Only bad people who are killing them and not knowing how to behave around these mostly gentle creatures who are highly beneficial.

Thank you so much for writing, for spreading the word about my book, and please don’t hesitate to ask more questions.

Related posts:

1. Dorsett Apple tree
2. Few Fruits On Fruit Trees
3. Why Did I Get So Few Melons? (Pollination of Melon Plants, by Hand or By Bees)

Bee Hive in My Garden

I grew up on a farm so I knew not be afraid of a bee swarm. Bees can interpret fearful feelings and vibrations as being similar to anger. When they sense these emotions they often become agitated, making loud buzzing sounds and flying around more rapidly. But bees have no animosity towards us unless they think we are threatening to attack their hive. African bees are more territorial than European bees. They will attack anyone that threatens their hive, and they often interpret loud machinery as just such a threat. But a swarm is not the same thing as a hive. A hive is a place where bees have settled down to make a home, gather honey, and raise offspring. A swarm is simply a new group of bees on the move looking for a new home. Bees do not attack to protect the swarm unless someone actively attacks them, for example by spraying the swarm with insecticide or even water. Please don’t spray since this may harm the queen. Also, spraying water may make the queen decide she will start laying. Then the bees will not leave. Spraying Africanized bees is highly dangerous. One might even get killed. A swarm is not dangerous unless attacked, but it does require sensibleaction.

Bee Hive in My Garden

When I found the swarm in my garden I knew these bees might very likely be Africanized bees and not European bees. Nonetheless, I did not call in a pest control company because bees are not pests. Pesticide companies kill bees, but good beekeepers catch bees and then they provide them with an appropriate hive and manage them properly. Even Africanized bees become easy to handle if you remove their Africanized queen and substitute a European queen. Once you introduce a European queen they calm right down.

Bee Hive in My Garden

In the case of the swarm I found, I contacted my gardener. He had been a beekeeper all his life and respected the sacred life of bees and would be glad to have the bees. He brought a wooden box to my garden and using smoke to subdue the bees, he took out the queen and put her into the box. The rest of the bees followed and he and took them home to Mexico where he has many beehives and collects and sells the honey.

Bee Hive in My Garden

For those who live in San Diego and environs I suggest you call Pete Holtzen, Honeybee Rescue, 619/286-7258. If Pete cannot help you, he may be able to suggest other beekeepers to catch and preserve bees if you find a swarm on your property. If you discover a swarm that has made a home in an unwanted place such as the eaves of your house, it is imperative that you get them out of there right away before they set up housekeeping. A good beekeeper will come and find the queen, put her into a box nearby, and all the bees will quickly join her. This is the way to get the bees out of your house or shed and not by using poisons.

Related posts:

1. What to do if you find a bee swarm
2. Wisteria, Clivia & Fountain
3. More Bees

European gardeners, growers, and beekeepers have been fighting the Bayer company about this problem through the courts for ten years, but up until now the Bayer people have refused to admit that imidacloprid harms bees. On the side of the Europeans is one undisputed fact: Imidacloprid is claimed by Bayer not to kill white grubs outright,  but to get rid of them by confusing them so that they cannot function in a normal manner, which in turn interrupts their life cycle and prevents their proliferation. Does that sound familiar? This is exactly what is happening to bees when they are afflicted with CCD. They cannot find their way back to the hive and they cannot perform tasks in a normal manner. As you can see, lawn owners, golf course managers, and agriculturists using commercial fertilizers containing grub control may be unwittingly killing bees. And whatever is killing our domestic bees is also killing the many species of wild bees, including carpenter bees, mason bees, and four local species of bumble bees. All these are disappearing along with feral European and Africanized bees and domestic European honeybees.

Please help save the world’s bees by your own actions and by spreading the word. Please never spray with Spinosad (discussed last month) unless in the evening hours and in very small quantities while using a small hand sprayer (the kind sold for moistening laundry), and then only moistening the leaves of plants at a distance from flowers or only on geranium blossoms, since bees never visit them. Never purchase or use Spinosad in a broadcast spray container. Never use Sluggo Plus in moist spots visited by bees, because it contains Spinosad. Above all, please stop using all products containing imidacloprid, including Merit and Bayer Advantage, and use organic controls instead.

Beneficial nematodes and products containing milky spore disease will control white grubs in organically grown lawns. (Synthetic fertilizers may kill live organisms, such as beneficial nematodes and milky spore.) Never use Bayer Advantage to control giant white fly. Instead, spread a layer of worm castings over the roots of affected plants. Earthworm castings will get rid of giant white fly completely, as proved in my own garden. Earthworm castings over rose roots seem to be controlling rose slug also, and they certainly control ants. Releasing delphastus beetles can also help control giant white fly. Eschew chemical sprays, release beneficials to control pests, and provide beneficials with pollen-bearing plants plus water to drink in a fountain, or at least a birdbath.

Related posts:

1. Please Help Save the Bees Pt 1
2. More Bees
3. Mason Bees

A number of disasters threaten domestic and wild bees, but this brief article is just to alert you to some of the hazards to bees from pesticides and to let you know, as gardeners, how you can help. One of the threats comes from Spinosad, a somewhat new pesticide used by farmers and gardeners and touted by experts as a safe and harmless product. Even organic gardeners who avidly avoid chemical pesticides suggest this organic spray as a control for budworm, bougainvillea looper, rose slug, and other caterpillar-like pests. The active ingredient in Spinosad is a fermented soil-bacteria, similar to BT (Bacillus thuringiensis), but in this case it is Saccharopolyspora spinosa, an organism originally found under the floorboards of an abandoned rum factory in the Caribbean. This product is totally organic, thus it received the OMRI (Organic Materials Review Institute) Seal of Approval. But if you read the label, which one would hope all consumers do, you immediately discover in the first line that Spinosad is highly toxic to bees. How, I wonder, did Spinosad get the OMRI seal of approval? Worse yet, Spinosad is sold in containers with spray attachments on the top of them, inviting the unsuspecting public to broadcast the spray on everything in sight. This is what people did with DDT before Rachel Carson exposed its hazards, and DDT was used against the same pest: the lowly caterpillar. Couldn’t we rely on birds and trichogramma wasps and other beneficials to control caterpillars and thus save our bees?

The instructions on the label of Spinosad suggest spraying in such a way that the spray will be dry before bees return to the sprayed area. What are we supposed to do, put up warning signs? Even if bees could read and would obediently stay away, the dry product will be in the pollen, and this pollen will weaken the bee larvae when the parent bees lovingly take it back to the hive and feed it to their young. Infected pollen will make some of the larvae sick and kill a few of them. (The label won’t tell you this. I had to do some research to find it out.) Now if I were a bee I would be more than a little upset if I took food home to my young and discovered it made them all sick and that it even killed a few of them. I wouldn’t want any of my babies to be weakened or sickened, let alone killed. And yet organic gardeners are using this product and recommending it to others. Expert horticulturists and agriculturists are recommending it. I always hope to follow the latest in scientific information, but since I am also an organic gardener I have to differ with those who consider Spinosad a safe spray. On the other hand it is possible to use Spinosad in a safe way, but that requires care, thought, restraint, and knowledge—qualities the public at large usually lacks.
Please help save the world’s bees by your own actions and by spreading the word. Please never spray with Spinosad unless in the evening hours and in very small quantities while using a small hand sprayer (the kind sold for moistening laundry), and then only moistening the leaves of plants at a distance from flowers or only on geranium blossoms, since bees never visit them. Never purchase or use Spinosad in a broadcast spray container. If you have it in a container use it slowly by pouring the right quantity into a hand sprayer. Don’t give it away to someone else who can misuse it. Never use Sluggo Plus in moist spots visited by bees, because it contains Spinosad.

Related posts:

1. Please Help Save the Bees Pt 2
2. Why Did I Get So Few Melons? (Pollination of Melon Plants, by Hand or By Bees)
3. More Bees