Plant It And They Will Come

It’s National Pollinator Week! Today, we want to catch you up on how the bees are doing since the 2006 recognition of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), the challenges pollinators are facing, and what you can do to help. We are also featuring some of our pollinator-friendly plants that are available for purchase at the Farm Stand. Be sure to visit to find some plants for your garden: “plant it and they will come.”

The photos that are displayed in this post are of the Bees N Blooms pollinators by photographer Mark Hullinger, who has spent many hours at the farm patiently waiting for the perfect pose from a diverse collection of pollinators. Be sure to click on the photos to view in greater detail. If you love the pictures, please consider pre-ordering our 16-month Bees N Blooms Calendar! They will be available at the end of July.

How Are The Bees Doing?

In the winter of 2006-2007, commercial beekeepers first noticed serious problems with their honey bees, losing thousands of colonies over that winter. Beekeepers would go into hives to find only the queen and a small cluster of bees. All the other adult bees were just gone! Bee brood had been abandoned. And the honey left in the hive, now unguarded, was not robbed out by bees or other insects (very unusual!). This constellation of colony failure symptoms was described by the term Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Possible causes of CCD include pesticide use, pests (e.g., the Varroa mite), diseases, and lack of good forage for the bees, or some combination of these factors. Studies to date have not definitively illuminated the cause, but there are correlations with certain insecticides and fungicides that bees encounter in their environment.

Thirteen years have passed, and you may be wondering how the bees are doing now. The answer is that the bees are still not thriving, but the symptoms are different—not like classic CCD. Overwintering losses are still high, but empty hives are not seen as much any more. Instead, queens are failing at record rates, which is translating into summer hive losses, where the population slowly dwindles as the queen stops laying eggs or lays only infertile eggs. A survey of hive losses from 2019 shows that summer losses were at an all-time high last year. Beekeepers are having to work harder and spend more money to keep their colonies alive, and some commercial beekeepers who pollinate the crops that make up our food supply are simply throwing in the towel, as beekeeping has become economically unsustainable.

What about the native bees and other pollinators? We don’t know as much about them, as there are only a few people tracking the populations of a few species, but 2019 saw the first listing of a native bee (the Rusty-Patched bumble bee) as a federally endangered species. And as we mentioned in a previous blog post, the Monarch butterfly population is down to less than 1% of what it used to be in the 1980s.

Now the bright spot! As we plant more flowers and flowering trees here at Bees N Blooms, we see more native pollinators and more different kinds of pollinators as the years pass. So it DOES make a difference!

What Can You Do?

The best thing for people to do to help the pollinators is to invest in organic plants and trees. It’s also important to avoid all use of insecticides and fungicides, as there are clear links between these chemicals and adverse effects on bees. Here at Bees N Blooms, we are committed to providing certified organic plants, unlike those sold at the chain stores. We sell a variety of pollinator favorites, such as Beach Aster, Mr. Happy Echium, Milkweed, Rosy Buckwheat, Mexican Torch Sunflower, Maximilian Sunflower, Nettle Leaf Giant Hyssop, and Mountain Mint. The organic trees that we sell from our nursery include Red Flowering Gum, Honey Locust, Linden, Red Maple, and Vitex. Plant it and they will come. Invest in healthy habitats today!

In Other News…Lavender U-Cut, Coming Up!

The Labyrinth is winding down and is dimming in color. We plan to begin harvesting ring by ring in the Labyrinth in the few weeks and will continue until it is all pruned back. The first two weekends in July be sure to come out for our Lavender U-Cut experience in our field of Grosso lavender, July 3rd & 5th and July 10th and 12th. Make wands, wreaths, bouquets, sachets, and other lavender crafts from your very own fresh harvest. Stay tuned for next week’s blog with more information about Lavender U-Cut. Till next time!