Small carpenter bees everywhere

The Eastern Carpenter bees have tiny little cousins, called naturally enough, the Small Carpenter Bees. Instead of digging into wood, the Small Carpenter bee nests in a broken or cut stem, adding cell after cell, forming a row of larvae. When she gets to the end, she builds a cell for herself and there she […]

Found some pollinators in the chives

Sunday was a beautiful sunny day to go visit the Pollinator plot at the community garden. The chives have been flowering for some days, and I was looking forward to seeing the bees. Sure enough, the chives were hosting a bee party.

Tiny bees in the raspberries

I wouldn’t be looking forward to so many fruits if it weren’t for the bees. And since National Pollinator Week starts today, it seemed like a good excuse to spend a little time this morning looking for bees. It never ceases to amaze me, how many bees you can find. The big ones buzz pretty […]

Giving ground to the bees

Once you’re feeding native bees, they also need a place to live. For a lot of native bees, that’s in the ground. Miner bees, sweat bees, squash bees, and more, are solitary bees that dig secret tunnels where they lay their eggs on a time capsule of food. The larvae need a safe place to […]

Let hover flies be your pest-killers

If you’re going to nurture wildflowers and plant flowers to help the native bees, it doesn’t make sense to kill them. Unfortunately pesticides are only chemicals, and they’re not smart enough to know which bugs not to kill. Fortunately, a nice bonus that comes of planting for bees is that many of the same flowers […]

It’s National Pollinator Week again

With the sun shining until 9 p.m. everyone knows today is the summer solstice. But if it weren’t for Bug Girl, I wouldn’t have noticed that today is the first day of National Pollinator Week. How did I miss that? So what shall I do to celebrate?