Gardening in Central Oregon: The Incredible Lightness of Bee-ing

I love to sit and weed - it's such a peaceful, Zen-like thing to do on a pleasant summer day. I never use ear buds to listen to music and my phone is turned off so I can hear the garden; the rustle of the leaves in the little gusts of wind, the continuous chirping of the birds in the trees and, especially, my friendly local honey bees and bumblebees.

My hubby and I are tickled each year when the early summer weather helps the cat mint to bloom and attract the big, fat, clumsy-looking bumble bees. They always make us laugh when they perch on the tiny blue flowers causing the short stems to bend almost to the ground with their weight.

This is a Honey Bee

Have you ever looked at a bee on a flower? If they've been working at it for a while, they'll be coated in yellow pollen - almost discoloring their fuzzy black bodies. They have little saddlebags on their "hips" where they pack the nectar to bring it back to the hive and it's easy to see on the fat bumble bees.

I often hear people worrying about "bee" stings. But when they describe the insect (long smooth body, yellow and black bands of color) and where they saw it (at the picnic table, foraging in the abandoned hamburger), I can assure them it's a wasp or a yellow jacket they're describing, NOT a bee.

This is a Yellow Jacket Wasp

You can pretty safely assume a bee won't sting you unless you're directly threatening its nest - they die if they sting, when their stinger is ripped from their body. A wasp (a yellow jacket is a variety of wasp) will sting if you stop them in their hunt for food or threaten their nest. Actually, by keeping them from hunting for your hamburger, they probably think you are threatening their nest since they need to build up reserves for the winter. And they can sting repeatedly without harming themselves.

But the bees are our primary source of food - did you know that one of every three servings of food on your family's table is due to bees and other pollinators? The humble bee helps the squash blossom, the carrot umbel, the tomato flower develop into a fruit. Without bees we wouldn't have most of our agricultural crops including alfalfa, onions, cherries, apples, watermelon, raspberries, almonds (and many other nuts) and our flowers.

Recently I read an article in the Washington Post that said that we don't need to worry, the bees aren't dying in huge numbers - that it was all a fabrication. I was quite surprised since no beekeeper or university source agrees with the conservative organization that claimed a resurgence of the bee population this summer. Indeed, deeper reading revealed that the source of the optimism are beekeepers who said they're buying new queens, new hives, and using all available measures to save their bees from extinction. They're trying desperately to protect their bees from the ravages of temperature change, illness, and increased pesticide usage.

There may be hope for the bees when more and more homeowners, farmers and small-tract growers think globally and act locally to plant organic when feasible, develop native habitat around their crops, limit pesticide use (herbicides and insecticides) and support local growers selling local products.