EARTH WEEK: DAY FIVE

The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee; a clover, any time, to him is aristocracy.
~Emily Dickinson

Celebrating Bees


"One-third of the world's food supply depends on bees for pollination. Every year in California alone, honeybees pollinate more than 100 crops worth more than $6 billion, including vegetables, nuts (notably almonds), fruit and wildflowers. Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is the phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or from a colony of European honeybees, Apis mellifera, suddenly disappear.

To produce their own drug-free queens, a few Marin County beekeepers are breeding queens that are able to detect a hive infested with mites and other pathogens, kill and remove the damaged brood, and thus protect the rest of the hive from infection. Also, University of California researchers are selectively breeding bees that hoard pollen, as this trait enables these bees to maintain their nutritional requirements over the winter and concomitantly protects them from succumbing to CCD.

To learn more about bees and CCD watch PBS' Silence of the Bees: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/silence-of-the-bees/video-podcast/69/ and for bee-friendly gardening, visit the farm at the College of Marin's Indian Valley campus. Bethallyn Black, the farm manager, working with Steve Smart, a local organic bee grower, is installing five beehives, each with an organic queen bee and pheromone to attract feral male drones from untreated hives. These hives will not be sprayed with toxic chemicals for pathogens, such as mites. The goal is to breed queens with feral males in the midst of myriad flowers and vegetables attractive to bees on this productive organic farm. The mix of pollens available in the farm's garden will provide the building blocks for the best bee diet and most robust bees. It's hoped this type of endeavor will inspire beekeepers in other parts of the country and world to raise bees without the use of pesticides, herbicides or other unnatural or harmful substances, so that bee populations will begin to be restored to their former health." Full Marin IJ article click here

Creating a Bee Friendly Garden

Bees are all about pollen. If you want to support the many different varieties of bees which range through your yard, plant some things which will feed them.

The good news here is that bee-friendly plants are easy to grow. Scatter a variety through your yard, ensuring a good supply of pollen through the warm months. Bees prefer flowers that are blue, purple, or yellow.

Clover is a great choice. Bees love it, and clover makes attractive and robust ground cover. There are organic varieties available.

Other bee-yummy plants: sage, salvia, oregano, lavender, ironweed, yarrow, yellow hyssop, alfalfa, honeywort, dragonhead, echinacea, bee balm (guess where the name comes from?), buttercup, goldenrod, and English thyme.

Flowering trees are also attractive to bees. Try tulip poplars, tupelos, oranges, and sourwoods. Don’t forget that bees need sources of shallow water.

Unless you have particular bee allergies, don’t be afraid of attracting pollinators to your property. The “bees” that give most people trouble — yellowjackets, wasps, and hornets — aren’t really bees at all, and won’t be attracted by bee-friendly plants.

Local San Rafael Honey Contact:

Bill Pappy
willbpappy@hotmail.com
415 499 1099

The Careful Valentine

Green Tip: Buy Local, Sustainable Flowers for Valentine’s Day!

• For Valentine’s, brighten up someone’s day! Give them the gift of local flowers.
• Most of the cut flowers that we find at grocery stores are flown in from miles away, creating a giant carbon footprint.
• When we buy locally from farmers and growers in the Bay area, we reduce the negative environmental impact of importing flowers.
• Next time you go to your local florist or farmers market, ask them what flowers are local, or better yet, make your own bouquet from your surroundings.
  

Local flower resource: www.marinflora.com

A Few Sobering Facts About Valentines Day (From Green Muze's Valerie Williams) Full Article click here

Flowers, considered an expression of love, have an ugly side most consumers don’t know about. There are an estimated 40,000 flower workers in Ecuador, and more than 100,000 in Colombia, working to grow, harvest, and package flowers and carnations for North Americans. Flower workers are routinely prevented from organizing unions, experience sexual harassment, forced pregnancy testing, and numerous health and safety violations according to the International Labor Rights Forum.

Flowers are one of the top pesticide-intensive agricultural crops. The Green Book estimates if all the roses purchased for Valentine’s Day in the USA were organically grown, it would prevent the use of 22,700 pounds of pesticides. A joint report between US Labor Education in the Americans and the International Labor Rights Fund found flower companies in Ecuador use more than 30 different chemicals, in addition to fertilizers, in the production of their cut flowers. The report also indicated flower workers experience higher-than-average rates of premature births, congenital malformations and miscarriages. This is in addition to inordinately high incidents of headaches, asthma attacks, frequent colds, vomiting and weight loss. In some areas more than 50% of flower workers have symptoms of pesticide poisoning.

In every area where industrial flower growing takes place, the environmental impact is evidenced through loss of animal and plant species, water resources running out and high levels of deadly chemicals leaching into local water and the surrounding land. In addition to worker’s health concerns and the environmental impact of purchasing non-organic flowers, greenhouse gases produced from the transportation of cut flowers need to be taken into consideration as part of the environmental costs of purchasing flowers for Valentine’s Day. UPS, a North American courier and freight company, shipped more than 14.8 million stems of fresh cut flowers to North America from various South American countries in 2005. From Kenya to Holland to Columbia, the flower industry is having deadly repercussions for the environment.

PLANTING FOR BEES

GREEN TIP
Brought to you by the MdTL Green Committee

Did you know that one of every three bites you took probably came from a plant pollinated
by wild pollinators? About 1/3 of our temperate vegetable, fruit, and nut crops, along with most ofour wildland flowers, depend on the pollinating services of bees.

Recent surveys (conducted in the early to mid 1990s) indicate that pollinators world-wide are declining.The cause for decline is habitat destruction brought about by human development.

Despite their occasional aggressive behavior, male bees of all species are stingless. One way to distinguish females from males is that, on a good day, females' legs, head, or bellies - depending on the species - are covered with bright blobs of yellow, purple, or white pollen. Females spend most of their time shimmying through pollen and sipping nectar from their favorite flowers, while males are frequently attending other business.

Some favorite native bee flowers: sunflowers, california poppy, sweetpea, borage, marigold, dandelion, and cosmos.

Stop by the Green Committee's table during Earth Week (April 20-24) and receive some sunflowers seeds or sunflower seedlings for planting in your home garden. We will be featuring bees and sunflowers one morning during Earth week and will provide more information about these pollinators as well as lots of local resources.