North American Bumblebee Gardens for North America’s Bumblebees

Summary: Bumblebee gardens in Canada, Mexico and the United States help sustain North American bumblebees, buzz pollinators of greenhouse peppers and tomatoes.

Two female Morrison’s bumble bees (Combus morrisoni) sonicate (buzz pollinate) pollen from a garden tomato’s pored-anthers, as depicted by Steve Buchanan, Connecticut-based illustrator and former concert pianist and James Madison University piano teacher; Beatriz Moisset and Stephen Buchmann, Bee Basics An Introduction to our Native Bees (USDA Forest Service and Pollinator Partnership publication, Nov. 30, 2016), page 21: U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDAGov), CC BY ND 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

Blue sky and orange-red sunset colors attract North America’s native bumblebees to bumblebee gardens in Canada, Mexico and the United States, according to the April 2016 issue of Better Homes and Gardens.

Karen Weir-Jimerson, author of Winging It, brings together quick facts regarding not only bumblebees but also such pollinating insects as leafcutter bees, mason bees and moths. She calculates that there are over 4,000 species of bees native to North America, where honeybees represent imports by European colonists in the early 17th century. She describes butterflies, honeybees and moths respectively pollinating bright orange, purple, red and yellow blooms; blue, yellow and white blooms; and pale or white night-flowering blooms. She explains that gardeners allergic to bee venom need epinephrine handy for rare occasions when bumblebees sting in response to being sprayed, stepped on or swatted.

Maureen Tarrant, homeowner on Cape Cod, finds that bumblebee-friendly gardening on a Nantucket Sound inlet gives her a “garden that looks like a Monet wildflower field.” She most often gardens “side by side with the bumblebees. We all seem to be going about our business. They never are a problem to me.”
Conserving Bumble Bees, free publication through the Xerces Society website, has similar conclusions regarding interactions between North American bumblebees and gardeners in North America’s bumblebee gardens.

Co-authors Scott Hoffman Black, Rich Hatfield, Sarina Jepsen, Eric Mader and Matthew Shepherd identify bumblebees as long flight-season fliers at low temperatures and in low light. Climate change, competitive honeybees, habitat fragmentation and loss, low genetic diversity, overgrazing and pesticides join non-native pathogens in reducing numbers of foraging, nesting and overwintering bumblebees.

Bumblebee queens keep 50- to 500-member colonies whose drones and workers never overwinter and whose annually changing nests generally represent abandoned ground-nesting birds’ and mammals’ shelters. They leave sets of four to 16 eggs to hatch, from haphazard waxen pots, in four days into larvae that mature in four to five weeks. Males mature to mate elsewhere with other colony queens while females overwinter as queens or perish as workers feeding larvae, foraging, maintaining nests and tending larvae.

Long-tongued bumblebees nectar on and pollinate long-tubed flowers that remain un-pollinated when “nectar robbing” short-tongued bumblebees bite holes into tube bases to catch dripping, leaking nectar.

Bumblebee gardens offer gardeners opportunities to witness buzz pollination, whereby greenhouse-grown blueberries, cranberries, clover, eggplants, peppers, tomatoes and zucchini get pollinated by bumblebees’ buzzing dislodging pollen.

Anise hyssop, beebalm, butterfly-weed, common horsemint, Dutchman’s breeches, field thistle, Michaelmas daisy, showy goldenrod, smooth penstemon, spotted geranium and sundial lupine proliferate in northeastern bumblebee gardens. Big-leaf lupine, California poppy, Canada goldenrod, coyote mint, lacy phacelia, lance self-heal, nettle-leaf horsemint, Nuttall’s sunflower, royal penstemon and showy milkweed qualify as northwest bumblebee attractors.

Butterflyweed, common buttonbrush, field thistle, great blue lobelia, narrow-leaf mountain-mint, spotted beebalm, sundial lupine, swamp rose, tall blazing star and wild azalea remain southeastern bumblebee favorites. Arrow-leaf balsamroot, beebalm, California poppy, Canada goldenrod, creosote bush, golden prairie clover, lacy phacelia, showy milkweed, silvery lupine and white honeysuckle serve as southwestern bumblebee attractors.

Charles Darwin, not Albert Einstein in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, tells of iconic plants, not our world, dying off if bumblebees, not honeybees, go extinct.

Bumblebee-friendly gardening includes buzz-pollination friendly plantings, such as greenhouse blueberries, peppers and tomatoes: USDA NRCS @USDA_NRCS, via Twitter April 5, 2016

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Two female Morrison’s bumble bees (Combus morrisoni) sonicate (buzz pollinate) pollen from a garden tomato’s pored-anthers, as depicted by Steve Buchanan, Connecticut-based illustrator and former concert pianist and James Madison University piano teacher (Gerri Hirshey, "Putting His Stamp on Bugs and Bees," The New York Times, Sep. 2, 2007, @ https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/02colct.html); Beatriz Moisset and Stephen Buchmann, Bee Basics An Introduction to our Native Bees (USDA Forest Service and Pollinator Partnership publication, Nov. 30, 2016), page 21: U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDAGov), CC BY ND 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/usdagov/6009063767/;
Beatriz Moisset and Stephen Buchmann, Bee Basics, via USDA @ https://efotg.sc.egov.usda.gov/references/Public/SC/Bee_Basics_North_American_Bee_ID.pdf;
via USDA Blog Aug. 4, 2011, @ https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2011/08/04/usda-forest-service-booklet-touts-value-native-bees

Bumblebee-friendly gardening includes buzz-pollination friendly plantings, such as greenhouse blueberries, peppers and tomatoes: USDA NRCS @USDA_NRCS, via Twitter April 5, 2016, @ https://twitter.com/USDA_NRCS/status/717406849956388864

For further information:

BBCT‏ @BumblebeeTrust. 15 March 2016. "Further to our post on buzz pollination watch this amazing short slow motion footage of a #bumblebee buzzing!" Twitter.
Available @ https://twitter.com/BumblebeeTrust/status/709703259473186817

“Bumblebee Nests.” Bumblebee Conservation Trust.
Available @ http://bumblebeeconservation.org/about-bees/habitats/bumblebee-nests/

Garden Time TV. 6 July 2011. “Bee Plants.” YouTube.
Available @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb4gkLXrBBU&nohtml5=False

Hatfield, Rich; Jepsen, Sarina; Mader, Eric; Black, Scott Hoffman; and Shepherd, Matthew. 2012. Conserving Bumble Bees: Guidelines for Creating and Managing Habitat for America’s Declining Pollinators. Portland, OR: The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.
Available @ http://www.xerces.org/bumblebees/guidelines/

Smithsonian Channel. 11 February 2016. “Slo-Mo Footage of a Bumble Bee Dislodging Pollen.” YouTube.
Available @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7q9Kn1rhRc

“This Month in Better Homes and Gardens Magazine.” Better Homes and Garden Magazine.
Available @ http://www.bhg.com/better-homes-and-garden-magazine/

USDA NRCS‏ @USDA_NRCS. 5 April 2016. "Help your neighborhood bee by planting for them. Celebrate #NationalGardenMonth." Twitter. April 5, 2016.
Available @ https://twitter.com/USDA_NRCS/status/717406849956388864

Weir-Jimerson, Karen. April 2016. “Winging It.” Better Homes and Gardens 94 (4): 94–99.