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  • From: "Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>
  • To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] Fw: SF Chron: BEES ON THEIR KNEES, GARDENERS TO THE RESCUE
  • Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2007 20:41:17 -0800

BEES ON THEIR KNEES, GARDENERS TO THE RESCUE

A world without bees is a world without chocolate
UC professor says urban gardeners could save
California's native bee population and avert an
ecological catastrophe

Alison Rood, Special to The Chronicle
Saturday, March 3, 2007

When Professor Gordon Frankie wants to impress
schoolchildren with the importance of bees, he lays
out an array of foods such as berries, grapes, pears
and chocolate alongside a couple of dried-out
tortillas and rice cakes and asks them which foods
they prefer.

"Invariably the kids go for the fruits and chocolate,"
he said. "Then I tell them: In a world without bees,
the only choice they'd have would be the dried-out
tortillas or rice cakes, since wheat and rice are
self-pollinated. Even chocolate, from the cacao plant,
depends on the pollination of bees. That gets their
attention."

Frankie, an entomologist at UC Berkeley and a
specialist in the behavior of native bees, has been
the leader of a decadelong urban bee research project.
By documenting bee diversity and populations in urban
gardens throughout California, he's discovering which
flowering plants attract native bees and determining
whether urban gardens can support bees. He said the
declining native bee population is comparable to
global warming in terms of a potential ecological
catastrophe.

"We're losing our star pollinators," he said, "so it's
important to try to do something on an individual
basis. A lot of what people grow now is dependent on
bees and other invertebrates, but people just don't
see or know that these insects are providing a lot of
free services."

There are 1,600 species of native bees in California.
Native bees, or wild bees, as they are sometimes
called, have evolved with their native host flowers
over a long period of time. Honeybees, on the other
hand, were imported to America from Europe.

In other words, honeybees are an exotic species, but
native bees, as the name implies, have always been
here. Native bees also differ from honeybees because
most are not social and make individual nests rather
than rely on a colony. Although they don't produce
honey, native bees pollinate about one-third of our
vegetable, fruit and nut crops as well as almost all
of our wildflowers.

Today, suburban developments are replacing wild
habitats where native bees once thrived. Meanwhile,
agricultural practices, which often include widespread
pesticide use and plowing under native plants, have
been just as destructive. Commercially managed exotic
honeybee populations aren't faring any better. During
the past few years pesticides and parasitic mites have
drastically reduced their numbers.

A report in the Nov. 27, 2006, New York Times
described the beginning of what bee researchers are
calling "colony collapse disorder," in which honeybees
are disappearing, flying off in search of pollen and
nectar and not returning to their colonies. Beekeepers
in 24 states have been shocked to discover their bees
are gone, threatening the pollination of $14 billion
worth of seeds and crops, the Times said.

The dire circumstances facing our native pollinators
is the motivation behind Frankie's project. As native
bees in the wild dwindled, Frankie began documenting
bee diversity and frequencies in urban environments to
determine whether urban gardens could support
reasonable native bee populations.

"We count bees, or rather, we monitor their
frequencies on flowers by doing three-minute counts on
patches of flowers that measure 1.5 meters by 1.5
meters," he said. "These counts are replicated several
times in order to get an average. We also do the
counts over a period of years when the variations
demand it. These frequencies tell us which bee species
are visiting and at what level -- that is, low, medium
or high. The frequencies can also be used to compare
cities and to monitor through time (over years) on
given plant species."

The details of the procedure can be found on the UC
Berkeley Web site, which also provides a list of
bee-friendly plants and offers a guide for building a
garden in which native bees will flourish. Frankie
notes that not all bees are interested in all flowers,
so a variety of flowering plants is necessary to
encourage visits.

"Instead of planting a garden with only the flowers
you enjoy, look around at the flowering plants that
are native to your area. Those are the plants that
will attract the bees. The bees know what they need,
and they'll come. If you plant it, they will come," he
said.

One garden that is doing just that is the Old City
Cemetery garden in Sacramento.

"The Sacramento cemetery has an incredible variety of
native bee species and in large numbers," Frankie
said. "It's one of our best sites in all of
California."

One of Frankie's favorites is a tiny treasure -- a
14-by-14-foot space that the owner has planted with 20
species of flowering plants in groupings of eight to
10 similar plants called "patches."

Frankie emphasizes that planting the same varieties
together is vital to a successful bee garden; and,
since native bees are seasonal, it's also important to
plant flowers that bloom successively over the spring,
summer and fall.

He mentioned four experimental gardens in the Bay Area
that boast a healthy number of native bees, including
the pollinator lab on the Berkeley campus. The three
others are at Lucas Valley School in Marin County, the
Randall Museum in San Francisco and the Livermore
Community Garden. The Berkeley campus garden will be
showcased May 6 as one of 65 gardens in the Bring Back
the Natives Garden Tour.

Other public gardens with substantial native bee
populations include the arboretum at UC Santa Cruz and
Descanso Gardens in Southern California.

When he's not collecting data in the field or teaching
conservation and environmental problem-solving in the
classroom, Frankie strives to enlighten the public
about the importance of native bees through workshops,
lectures and outreach programs.

He's also always looking for bees -- even when driving
through residential neighborhoods. He said he doesn't
hesitate to pull over if someone's front garden looks
promising. "People come out of their homes, wondering,
'Who is that strange guy snooping around my
flowerbeds?' "

Focusing attention on the pollinator crisis is also
the goal of the North American Pollinator Protection
Campaign, an alliance of conservation and
environmental groups, private industry, and state and
federal agencies. Its members hope that by educating
both the public and policymakers they can stop land
use practices that harm native bees.

The U.S. Senate has passed a resolution to protect
pollinators and has designated June 24-30 as National
Pollinator Week. That month the U.S. Postal Service
will release a pollination stamp series.

How does providing a safe haven for pollinators in
urban gardens relate to the larger agricultural
picture if farmers themselves aren't dedicated to
attracting native bees?

"Most of our research is designed for urban audiences,
and we've learned that urbanites like the idea of
doing some conservation in their own yards," Frankie
said. "The day may come when even more people want to
grow urban food, and we'll be able to tell them about
their pollinator needs. Some of the bee species in
urban gardens could also be important in the future
for agricultural crops. In that sense, the urban
garden environment may be regarded as a kind of
reservoir for genetic material."

The inspiration to create a bee-friendly garden should
come as easily to adults as it does to schoolchildren.
All it takes is imagining a life without fruits and
vegetables -- and a life without chocolate.
Resources

Gordon W. Frankie, division of insect biology, 137
Mulford Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720; (510) 642-0973;
nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens.

Join a free tour of native-plant gardens in the East
Bay from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 6. For more
information, visit www.bringingbackthenatives.net or
call Kathy Kramer at (510) 236-9558.

North American Pollinator Protection Campaign,
www.nappc.org; (415) 362-1137.

E-mail comments to home AT sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/03/HOGIROCUE71.DTL

This article appeared on page F - 1 of the San
Francisco Chronicle




  • [Homestead] Fw: SF Chron: BEES ON THEIR KNEES, GARDENERS TO THE RESCUE, Lynda, 03/03/2007

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