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  • Author Author: flyingbean
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ZinnBee Blog#01: Introduction of the project to Save the Bees

flyingbean

I have been a bee-friendly gardener over 10 years. Save the Bees design challenge touched my heart since I love bees. I am living in Minnesota, US. In the United States there are more than 4,000 species of native bees. Contrary to popular belief, the honeybee is not native to North America. European settlers brought the first colony of honeybees to Virginia in 1622 and it has since become our most common pollinator and the most important bee to domestic agriculture. One third of our food comes from crops pollinated by bees. My garden is a safe home for bees. At the same time, bees also brought a lot of joyful moments to me.  I named my project as ZinnBee from my gardening projects. Zinnia is one of my favorite flowers, which is one of the best flowers for bees. ZinnBee is named from Zinnia + Bee.

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There are almost limitless applications for Save the Bees applications.  University of Minnesota has a Bee Lab, which inspired me for the design ideas. UMN Bee Lab has been listing some actions to ask help from public in MN for a few years:

  1. Honeybees: monitoring mite loads by participating in Mite Check.
  2. Bumble bees: monitoring bumble bees and adopting a bumble bee route.
  3. Cellophane bees: UMN Bee Lab are curious about where these spring-emerging bees are nesting In and around the Twin Cities metro area.

Why will ZinnBee project  focus on the study of bee friendly environments for Cellophane bees? Cellophane bees are among of the very first pollinators to emerge in Spring here. The eternal struggle for bees in Minnesota, US, is finding enough food in early Spring, when most of nature is still sleeping!  Cellophane bees are ground-nesting bees as below.

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ZinnBee project is designed to collect information about where Cellophane bees feed in the early Spring. The goal is simply enough, however, the design challenge is still uncertain at this moment.

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  • Flowering is proving extremely erratic here at the moment, so proving difficult to get consistent all-year-long bee-friendly flowering going on in the garden. Snowdrops are currently in flower but I think the bees will end up missing out on them.

    If you can map out where the wild plants tend to flower in early spring, then you can probably reduce the search area substantially.

    I guess that the nest sites will be in close proximity to those food sources in order for the bees to conserve energy. Looks like the nest sites tend to be in areas of bare sandy soil so it may be possible to use the vegetation / bare soil index from remote sensing datasets to identify such areas.

    Sounds like a job for a 'drone patrol', or teaming up with schools for some 'citizen science' for sightings.

  • in reply to beacon_dave

    We don’t plant Snowdrops in our yard because we do doggie day care for the grand dogs.  I’ve never seen them eat flowers, but it’s possible that the stems and leaves could also be problematic.  That being said, it would be interesting to see bees out in the winter for flowers that bloom early.  I don’t tend to notice bees until early spring, but I’ll admit that I don’t look for them until then.

  • in reply to ralphjy

    I notice that a lot of the garden bulbs are listed as being toxic. I think the highest toxicity though tends to be concentrated in the bulb itself rather than the leaves or the flower. I suspect more of an issue for pets that like to dig lots of stuff up and then chew on it.

    A coarse mesh basket placed over the bulbs might be another solution - big enough to allow the bees to fly through but small enough to keep inquisitive pets noses out. Some stiff plastic plant climbing mesh bent into an arch and pegged down over any suspect plants should do the trick. 

    There are some hardy winter flowering heathers that are supposed to be bee friendly which might be good for any bees that are active before spring. They might be good for the Cellophane bees as heathers tend to be able to grow in the harsher soil conditions that these bees tend to nest in.

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  • in reply to ralphjy

    I notice that a lot of the garden bulbs are listed as being toxic. I think the highest toxicity though tends to be concentrated in the bulb itself rather than the leaves or the flower. I suspect more of an issue for pets that like to dig lots of stuff up and then chew on it.

    A coarse mesh basket placed over the bulbs might be another solution - big enough to allow the bees to fly through but small enough to keep inquisitive pets noses out. Some stiff plastic plant climbing mesh bent into an arch and pegged down over any suspect plants should do the trick. 

    There are some hardy winter flowering heathers that are supposed to be bee friendly which might be good for any bees that are active before spring. They might be good for the Cellophane bees as heathers tend to be able to grow in the harsher soil conditions that these bees tend to nest in.

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