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The Buzz about Bees

Bees have been the talk of the town but what exactly is all the buzz? Honey Bee, Bumble Bee, Mining Bee, Hairy Belly Bee, Wasp? Our food depends on pollination to ensure fruits and vegetable seeds can be fertile and continue the food supply. There are other pollinators but bees are under specific stress that makes your efforts even more important. 

First thing! EVENT TIME

JOIN THE PROTECTING POLINATORS PRESENTATION

Awareness has been growing about the challenges faced by native and managed bee populations in recent years. To increase awareness about pollinators and the importance of conserving their habitat, EALT has run an active Protecting Pollinators program since 2016. As part of this program, we give presentations to community groups and offer workshops on how to build bee hotels to support native bees. Currently, we can’t host these large gatherings, but we can still reach out to our community to tell you how you can help the bees!

MORE ABOUT BEES

About 75% of all flowering plants rely on animal pollinators and over 200,000 species of animals act as pollinators. Of those, about 1,000 are hummingbirds, bats, and small mammals. The rest are insects such as beetles, bees, ants, wasps, butterflies, and moths.

Bees are the primary pollinators. However, about 200,000 invertebrate species, (bees, moths, butterflies, beetles, and flies)serve as pollinators, as well as about 1,000 species of vertebrates (birds, mammals and reptiles).In the U.S., the annual benefit of managed honey bees to consumers is estimated at nearly $20 billion. The services provided by native pollinators contribute to the productivity of crops as well as to the survival and reproduction of many native plants.

Bees are the best documented pollinators in natural and agricultural landscapes. A wide range of plants in the Aster and Rose Families, blueberry crops, and tomatoes are just a few plants that benefit from bee pollinators. Most of us are familiar with the colonies of honey bees that have been the workhorses of agricultural pollination for years in Canada. They were imported from Europe almost 400 years ago and continue to be managed for honey production and pollination services.

There are over 800 species of native ground and twig nesting bees in Canada. Most of these bee species live a solitary life; a minority are social and form colonies or nest in aggregations. Native bees visit and pollinate many crops; in many cases they are better at transferring pollen than honey bees. Our native bees can be encouraged to do more to support agricultural endeavours if their needs for nesting habitat are met and if suitable sources of nectar, pollen, and water are provided. Bees come in a variety of body shapes and sizes, and even have tongues of different lengths. Native bees visit the widest range of flowers and crops of any pollinator group.

Bumble bees (Bombus spp.) form small colonies, usually underground making use of old rodent burrows or dense thatches. They are generalists, feeding on a wide range of plant types from May to September and are important pollinators of tomatoes and blueberries.

Sweat bees (family Halictidae) are medium to small-sized, slender bees that commonly nest underground. Various species are solitary while others form loose colonies, nesting side-by-side. Other common solitary bees include carpenter bees (Xylocopa virginica), which nest by chewing into wood; mining bees (Andrena spp.), which nest underground and are common in the spring; leaf-cutter bees (Megachile spp.), which prefer dead trees or branches for their nest sites; and mason bees (Osmia spp.), which utilize cavities they find in stems and dead wood that they fill with mud.

Where Do Pollinators (Bees) Go in the Winter?

As the summer season ends and the cooler weather approaches, once magnificent and colourful flowers begin to wither and wilt, while previously buzzing gardens become stems of silence. But where do the pollinators go? Pollinators, such as bees, butterflies, and birds all display a variety of amazing and unique strategies in order to survive the cold weather and overcome the harsh climate of the approaching winter.

As the winter temperatures start to freeze the air, honey bees form special clusters inside their hives to keep warm. Worker honey bees huddle around their queen and vibrate their wings and bodies in a “shivering” behaviour in order to generate heat inside the hive. This behaviour is amazingly carried out all winter, and uses up a lot of the bees’ energy. In order to fuel this heated huddle, honey bees use their stored honey as a main source of food in order to stay energized and keep the queen and the hive at an optimal temperature throughout the winter!

Bumble bees take a different approach, and only new queens survive the winter, while the rest of the colony dies off. In the fall, male bumble bees mate with future queens from different colonies, and these future queens spend the entire winter underground or in holes in soft wood that are safe and dry. Queen bumble bees are impressively large in size, and must consume as much nectar and pollen as possible in order to build up crucial fat reserves before entering a dormant phase in overwintering sites. In the following spring, queens will emerge and find perfect nesting sites to start brand new colonies of their own!

For native solitary bees, it is common for females to lay eggs in underground nests (mining bees, sweat bees, polyester bees), or in sealed and insulated cavities above ground (leaf cutting bees, mason bees). These eggs then hatch and survive the winter as dormant adults waiting to emerge in the spring, or as developing pupae kept safe and warm inside nests. Once the weather is warm enough, emerged females will find their own independent nesting sites and lay the next generation of eggs!

LEARN MORE ABOUT BEES & OTHER POLLINATORS

– Sources:https://www.pollinator.org/canada, https://anpc.ab.ca/

SELECTING PLANTS FOR POLLINATORS GUIDE FOR EDMONTON REGION

Creating a yard that is a buzzing paradise for honey bees

Creating a yard that is a buzzing paradise for honey bees and native pollinators will support biodiversity and help pollinate urban gardens. Here’s a few tips to a bee-utiful garden:

– Incorporate plants that are native to your area in your yard. Native bees and other native pollinators have evolved with native plants. By providing native plants, you’ll get the most diversity of pollinators and resilient gardens.

– When getting plants, avoid plants that have been treated with pesticides (ask at your garden centre) and avoid plants that are invasive in your region (check your local invasive species council online). While plants that are invasive might provide nectar and pollen, they invade other areas and reduce native plant cover. Check your local invasive species council online for plants to avoid.

– Choose a variety of flower shapes, sizes, and colours. Pick plants that bloom at different times, from early spring to fall so that pollinators have food all season.

– Embrace some ‘wildness’ in your garden—rock piles, bare soil, old stems, and rotting wood can provide nesting and resting sites for many pollinators.

Local Clubs, Groups, Native Plant Resources

The Edmonton Native Plant Group is an informal group of people in the Edmonton area who like to grow native plants and promote their use in gardening and landscaping to a wider public. We take part in a number of projects, in cooperation with the appropriate municipal authorities, which aim to enrich the natural flora of various parks and natural areas.

ENPG members raise native plants at the City of Edmonton’s Oldman Creek Nursery and maintain a demonstration native bed at the John Janzen Nature Centre, and the Muttart Conservatory. Volunteers also care for certain parts of City of Edmonton parks as Partners in Parks.

Clark Ecoscience and Sustainability Ltd. (CES) was founded in 2010. CES maximizes ecosystem services through native ecosystem conservation, restoration and rebuilding projects for citizens, industry, government, and non-profits.

CES started as an idea that Michael had while working on a picker truck. He took a look around and decided he wanted to learn more about changes in the environment, after hearing about climate change and biodiversity loss. It was at the University of Alberta where he learned about biology, geology, organic and inorganic chemistry, and finally ecology. While studying ecology, Michael began a second focus on sustainability – working with people to ensure today’s resources are available for future generations. It was in this work that he had the idea to merge sustainability and ecology together and thus Clark Ecoscience and Sustainability was born.

SHOP FOR PLANTS

Trees!

Coast to Coast Reforestation (C2C Trees) is Alberta’s largest—and Canada’s second largest—producer of container and bareroot tree seedlings. With five nurseries and five cold storage facilities located across the province, we supply reforestation and reclamation companies across Canada with premium quality tree seedlings.

For low-volume orders

Please visit our retail website TreeTime.ca We offer the same high-quality trees with the convenience of online ordering and free shipping on all orders over $100.00!

Crows

American Crows are familiar over much of the continent: large, intelligent, all-black birds with hoarse, cawing voices. They are common sights in treetops, fields, and roadsides, and in habitats ranging from open woods and empty beaches to town centers. They usually feed on the ground and eat almost anything – typically earthworms, insects and other small animals, seeds, and fruit but also garbage, carrion, and chicks they rob from nests. Their flight style is unique, a patient, methodical flapping that is rarely broken up with glides.

Magpies

Black-billed Magpies are familiar and entertaining birds of western North America. They sit on fenceposts and road signs or flap across rangelands, their white wing patches flashing and their very long tails trailing behind them. This large, flashy relative of jays and crows is a social creature, gathering in numbers to feed at carrion. They’re also vocal birds and keep up a regular stream of raucous or querulous calls. Both crows and magpies are resourceful and learn quickly. They are able to mimic the calls of other birds.

Habitat

Black-billed Magpies live among the meadows, grasslands, and sagebrush plains of the West. Their nesting territories often follow stream courses. Though they like open areas and are not found in dense woods, they stay close to cover for protection from raptors. Magpies don’t avoid human development, often spending time near barnyards, livestock areas, and grain elevators where they have ready access to food.

Food

Like other corvids (members of the jay and crow family), Black-billed Magpies have a wide-ranging diet. They eat wild fruit and grain, as well as grasshoppers and beetles that they find while foraging on the ground (they sometimes find beetles by flipping cow dung). They also kill small mammals such as squirrels and voles, and raid birds’ nests. Carrion is also a main food source, as are the fly maggots found in carrion. Sometimes they steal meat from the kills of coyotes and foxes. Magpies also land atop large animals, such as cows or moose, and pick ticks off them. When they find an abundant food source, magpies will cache food for short periods.

Behavior

On the wing, Black-billed Magpies make long, sweeping flights with white flashes of their wing patches and long, trailing tails. They perch at the tops of trees, which is a means of visually establishing their territory, the equivalent of other bird species’ songs. Magpies walk with a swaggering strut. They sometimes gather in flocks, even seemingly living communally, and will band together to mob a raptor. In groups, males establish dominance through a stretch display: raising the bill in the air and flashing their white eyelids. They also show aggression with their wings, flickering or quivering them to display the white wing patches; and tails spreading, quivering, or flicking their elongated tail feathers. During courtship they also use a tail-spreading display. Black-billed Magpies mate for life. The female initiates the pair bond by begging for food from the male, which begins courtship feeding. During breeding, the male stands guard near the female to reduce the chance she’ll mate with another male (which does occur). One of the most notable Black-billed Magpie behaviors is the so-called “funeral”—when one magpie discovers a dead magpie, it begins calling loudly to attract other magpies. The gathering of raucously calling magpies (up to 40 birds have been observed) may last for 10 to 15 minutes before the birds disperse and fly off silently.

Canada Goose

The big, black-necked Canada Goose with its signature white chinstrap mark is a familiar and widespread bird of fields and parks. Thousands of “honkers” migrate north and south each year, filling the sky with long V-formations. But as lawns have proliferated, more and more of these grassland-adapted birds are staying put in urban and suburban areas year-round, where some people regard them as pests.

Some migratory populations of the Canada Goose are not going as far south in the winter as they used to. This northward range shift has been attributed to changes in farm practices that makes waste grain more available in fall and winter, as well as changes in hunting pressure and changes in weather.

Habitat

Canada Geese live in a great many habitats near water, grassy fields, and grain fields. Canada Geese are particularly drawn to lawns for two reasons: they can digest grass, and when they are feeding with their young, manicured lawns give them a wide, unobstructed view of any approaching predators. So they are especially abundant in parks, airports, golf courses, and other areas with expansive lawns.

Food

In spring and summer, geese concentrate their feeding on grasses and sedges, including skunk cabbage leaves and eelgrass. During fall and winter, they rely more on berries and seeds, including agricultural grains, and seem especially fond of blueberries. They’re very efficient at removing kernels from dry corn cobs. Two subspecies have adapted to urban environments and graze on domesticated grasses year round.

Behavior

Canada Geese eat grain from fields, graze on grass, and dabble in shallow water by tipping forward and extending their necks underwater. During much of the year they associate in large flocks, and many of these birds may be related to one another. They mate for life with very low “divorce rates,” and pairs remain together throughout the year. Geese mate “assortatively,” larger birds choosing larger mates and smaller ones choosing smaller mates; in a given pair, the male is usually larger than the female. Most Canada Geese do not breed until their fourth year; less than 10 percent breed as yearlings, and most pair bonds are unstable until birds are at least two or three years old. Extra-pair copulations have been documented.

During spring, pairs break out from flocks and begin defending territories. Spacing of these pairs is variable and depends on availability of nest sites and population density; where population is large, even after a great many fights birds may end up nesting in view of one another, and some populations are semi-colonial.

Canada Goose threat displays may involve head pumping, bill opened with tongue raised, hissing, honking, and vibrating neck feathers. When an intruding goose doesn’t retreat, geese may grab each other by breast or throat and hit each other with their wings. Fighting may result in injuries.

Female selects nest site, builds nest, and incubates eggs. She may brood goslings in cold, wet, or windy weather and while they’re sleeping for first week after hatching. Male guards the nest while female incubates.

Soon after they hatch, goslings begin pecking at small objects, and spend most of their time sleeping and feeding. They remain with their parents constantly, though sometimes “gang broods” form, especially in more southern latitudes. These can include at least two broods, and sometimes five or more, that travel, feed, and loaf together, accompanied by at least one adult.

Young often remain with their parents for their entire first year, especially in the larger subspecies. As summer wanes birds become more social; they may gather in large numbers at food sources; where food is limited and patchy, may compete with displays and fights.

In winter, Geese can remain in northern areas with some open water and food resources even where temperatures are extremely cold. Geese breeding in the northernmost reaches of their range tend to migrate long distances to winter in the more southerly parts of the range, whereas geese breeding in southern Canada and the conterminous United States migrate shorter distances or not at all. Individuals tend to return to the same migratory stopover and wintering areas year after year. Spring migration may be difficult for observers to track because of over-wintering birds and movements between nighttime resting areas and feeding areas, but the bulk of spring migratory movements tend to move north behind the retreating snow line, where the temperature is averaging 35 degrees.

Migrating flocks generally include loose aggregations of family groups and individuals, in both spring and fall. Flights usually begin at dusk, but may begin anytime of day, and birds fly both night and day. They move in a V formation, with experienced individuals taking turns leading the flock.