How to Attract Native Bees to Your Organic Garden

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From left: Squash bees collect only cucurbit pollen grains; bumblebees pollinate legumes; sweat bees prefer strawberries and blueberries; mason bees can help assure a good harvest of many fruit trees.
From left: Squash bees collect only cucurbit pollen grains; bumblebees pollinate legumes; sweat bees prefer strawberries and blueberries; mason bees can help assure a good harvest of many fruit trees.
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Ground-nesting native bees can excavate chambers more than 36 inches deep. Next year’s bees develop inside the well-stocked brood cells.
Ground-nesting native bees can excavate chambers more than 36 inches deep. Next year’s bees develop inside the well-stocked brood cells.
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To build an insect hotel, stack wooden pallets and fill with stems and logs with holes drilled in them. Add bee-friendly plants nearby.
To build an insect hotel, stack wooden pallets and fill with stems and logs with holes drilled in them. Add bee-friendly plants nearby.

The planet’s best pollinators are in big trouble. Wildflower meadows where native bees once gathered nectar and pollen have turned into shopping malls, and dead trees where these ancient insects nest are getting harder to find. The native bees that do manage to survive are imperiled by Big Ag’s pesticides — unless they can find safe haven in diversified organic gardens.

The Fruits of Their Labor

Gardeners can reap huge benefits from hosting helpful pollinators, which tend to stay put when given food and a place to live. Native bees — including bumblebees, sweat bees, mining bees and others — pollinate many crops more efficiently and completely than honeybees do, with strawberries, blueberries and the entire squash family reliant on local pollinators to produce their best crops. Tomatoes visited by bumblebees bear bigger fruits, because the big bees’ buzzing action shakes loose more pollen than wind alone. Strawberries pollinated by multiple types of bees yield fewer misshapen berries, and pumpkins pollinated by native squash bees produce larger pumpkins. Pollinators play a significant role in producing 150 food crops in the United States and, according to the Xerces Society (a nonprofit wildlife conservation group), one in three mouthfuls of our food and drink requires their work.

Bee Activity

For about 70 percent of the 4,000 bee species native to North America, home is a secure spot tunneled into the ground (ground nesters). The other 30 percent nest in dead trees and stems (wood nesters). Almost all native bees live alone, not in colonies. Passive by nature, bees won’t usually sting unless squashed or pinched.

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