Mason Bees for the Backyard Gardener contains wonderful color photographs and illustrations. Step-by-step instructions get you started, choosing between an almost no-work method to a more involved method of winterizing your bees. In an era when people are asking "What's happening to the bees?" this book is indeed timely by focusing on a bee that requires no special equipment for its "beekeeping" criteria.
• Author Dave Hunter is at the leading edge of bee and pollinator issues • Mason bees are part of the solution to honeybees’ decline • No other bee book addresses the topic with such depth and interest • Includes useful information about leafcutter bees too! The national media regularly features dire stories on honeybee colony collapse and its danger to our food supply. But there's another, unsung bee that has the potential to save the planet—the mason bee. Mason Bee Revolution explains how docile, hard-working, solitary mason bees (and their compatriots, the leafcutter bees) are even more productive pollinators than honeybees, and keeping them can be a fun, easy, backyard hobby for gardeners, conservationists, foodies, and families everywhere. Why these bees? Bee pollination is critical for about 80 percent of US agricultural crops, increasing crop value by an estimated $15 billion annually. Since 2006, nearly a third of all honeybee hives have been lost each year, due to parasites, pesticides, habitat loss, climate change, and a newer malady called Colony Collapse Disorder. While scientists search for answers to save the honeybee, Dave Hunter and his company, Crown Bees, are leading the effort to increase the population of other highly efficient pollinators: One mason bee can produce twelve pounds of cherries, via pollination, where it would take sixty honey bees to achieve the same. Mason Bee Revolution is an easy-to-follow guide to keeping both mason and leafcutter bees. It tells you how to set up, care for, and harvest your own bees and what types of plants and habitat encourage mason and leafcutter bees, as well as provides general information on other common pollinators and bee-related facts, projects, and personalities.
Introduces concept of pollination and bees/ mason bees to gardeners in order to increase fruit production. Includes information on nest construction and mason bee build-up with detailed pen and ink illustrations.
In this eloquent plea for compassion and respect for all species, journalist and gardener Nancy Lawson describes why and how to welcome wildlife to our backyards. Through engaging anecdotes and inspired advice, profiles of home gardeners throughout the country, and interviews with scientists and horticulturalists, Lawson applies the broader lessons of ecology to our own outdoor spaces. Detailed chapters address planting for wildlife by choosing native species; providing habitats that shelter baby animals, as well as birds, bees, and butterflies; creating safe zones in the garden; cohabiting with creatures often regarded as pests; letting nature be your garden designer; and encouraging natural processes and evolution in the garden. The Humane Gardener fills a unique niche in describing simple principles for both attracting wildlife and peacefully resolving conflicts with all the creatures that share our world.
An introduction to the roughly 4000 different bee species found in the United States and Canada, dispelling common myths about bees while offering essential tips for telling them apart in the field
A New York Times 2018 Holiday Gift Selection Honey bees get all the press, but the fascinating story of North America’s native bees—an endangered species essential to our ecosystems and food supplies—is just as crucial. Through interviews with farmers, gardeners, scientists, and bee experts, Our Native Bees explores the importance of native bees and focuses on why they play a key role in gardening and agriculture. The people and stories are compelling: Paige Embry goes on a bee hunt with the world expert on the likely extinct Franklin’s bumble bee, raises blue orchard bees in her refrigerator, and learns about an organization that turns the out-of-play areas in golf courses into pollinator habitats. Our Native Bees is a fascinating, must-read for fans of natural history and science and anyone curious about bees.
"This comprehensive, essential book profiles over 65 perennial native plant species of the Midwest, Great Lakes region, Northeast and southern Canada plus the pollinators, beneficial insects and flower visitors the plants attract ... Readers learn to attract and identify pollinators and beneficial insects as well as customize their landscape planting for a particular type of pollinator with native plants. The book includes information on pollination, types of pollinators, pollinator conservation as well as pollinator landscape plans."--
With the recent decline of the European honey bee, it is more important than ever to encourage the activity of other native pollinators to keep your flowers beautiful and your grains and produce plentiful. In Attracting Native Pollinators, you’ll find ideas for building nesting structures and creating a welcoming habitat for an array of diverse pollinators that includes not only bees, but butterflies, moths, and more. Take action and protect North America’s food supply for the future, while at the same time enjoying a happily bustling landscape.
There's no need to choose between chicken keeping and gardening! This book includes a variety of strategies, garden designs, and tips for integrating two popular hobbies.
The Real Buzz on Bees What a promise! Actually, promises. First, here’s a book that teaches kids all about the fascinating world of bees. Second, fun exercises, activities, and illustrations engage the imagination and offer a deeper understanding of bee life and bee behavior. Third, by following a few simple steps including removing the book’s cover and taping it together, readers can transform the book into an actual living home for backyard bees. Fourth, added all together, Turn This Book Into a Beehive! lets kids make a difference in the world—building a home where bees can thrive is one small but critical step in reversing the alarming trend of dwindling bee populations. Written by Lynn Brunelle, author of Pop Bottle Science, whose gift for making science fun earned her four Emmy Awards as a writer for Bill Nye the Science Guy, Turn This Book Into a Beehive! introduces kids to the amazing mason bee, a non-aggressive, non-stinging super-pollinator that does the work of over 100 honeybees. Mason bees usually live in hollow reeds or holes in wood, but here’s how to make a home just for them: Tear out the perforated paper—each illustrated as a different room in a house—roll the sheets into tubes, enclose the tubes using the book’s cover, and hang the structure outside. The bees will arrive, pack mud into the tubes, and begin pollinating all the plants in your backyard. Twenty experiments and activities reveal even more about bees—how to smell like a bee, understand the role of flowers and pollen, learn how bees communicate with each other through “dance,” and more. It’s the real buzz on bees, delivered in the most ingenious and interactive way.
