Three presentations this evening; almost more info than one can digest in one evening. For complete summary, refer to pdf file: Gathering Summary: Pollinators & their Habitats; below is a summary.
Honey & Honeybees, by Tom Lawrence
- what makes up a modern bee hive,
- the life of the bees and their hive,
- tending the hive,
- removing honey from the comb, and
- commercial vs raw honey
Orchard Mason Bees & Bee Motels, by John Holbrook
- general information about mason bees and their life
- bee motels
- other considerations
Montana Native Plants, by Tamus Gannon
- changing points of view re: natives
- why go native?
- miscellaneous info
Related Files
- The EssentiaList: Pollinators and Their Habitat (pdf, 296 kb)
- Gathering Summary: Pollinators & their Habitats (pdf, 336 kb)
- John Holbrook: Orchard Mason Bees (pdf, 116 kb)
- John Holbrook: Extracting & Cleaning Orchard Mason Bees (pdf, 64 kb)
- Randy Person: Home Made Mason Bee Paper Liners that Work (pdf, 136 kb)
- USDA Brochure: Montana Native Plants for Pollinator-Friendly Plantings, April 2005 (pdf, )
- Honey (Wikipedia) includes excellent photos of managing the hive and extracting honey
Annie Garde had guest Byron Weber on the Pea Green Boat yesterday (MTPR, April 24), to talk about pollinating insects. This discussion included montana native bees: the bumblebee and orchard mason bees. He discussed mason bee motels, too.
And Sally Janover picked up this tidbit from the program: “Don’t move brush piles in your yard until butterflies and various pollinators have had time to leave their winter “nests” in the brush.”
John Holbrook just forwarded some additional, interesting information about bees:
“Honeybees are known by scientists to visit different flowers at different times of the day as nectar becomes available. They remember such patterns because they are able to equate nectar production with the sun’s position in the sky at the time nectar was first discovered in one kind of flower or another.”