Port City Pollinator Project

Back at the end of September we had a fantastic pollinator event at the Mobile Botanical Gardens and I never got around to posting the photos from then because hurricane helene was tearing through the south east and I was more concerned about my family and friends in WNC at that moment.
So here are a couple of photos from that. ✌️💛🐝

Another great pollinator class in the books! Mobile Christian students are the best little learners. One of these youngins reasoned that the 3 simple eyes on top of a bee’s head can help them avoid predators from above. I usually have to flesh that bit out for them (even the adults).
Have I mentioned lately that this is one of my favorite parts of keeping bees? My other favorite part is trading honey with my friends who make and grow their own delicious foods.
✌️💛🐝

Honey changes throughout the seasons based on what the bees are foraging. This is June harvest (lighter) and October harvest (darker). Everything is as different as the color variation, taste, smell, viscosity. I find in my frequent bee school taste tests that typically prepubescent people prefer the June honey and us grown folks prefer the later fall honey. Let me know if I can bring bee school to you!
✌️💛🐝

When you’re planning for native pollinators and other wildlife in your yard, remember that the plants are just as important after their life as during it. Those dried stems and seed heads provide food and nesting materials for countless species of insects, birds, small mammals and even reptiles. Many of our native pollinators lay their eggs in hollow sticks and moist warm leaf piles, many of the next spring’s fertile queens will burrow and hibernate, and if you bag or burn it all… well then we just can’t have nice things then can we.
✌️💛🐝🕷️🐞🦋🦗🪰🪲🐦🐦‍⬛

I was just checking out this little sprig of boneset flowering here. Not only is it a native medicinal herb but it’s also a pollinator favorite this time of year and usually can see visitors such as bumblebees, banded wasps, small moths, flies and beetles. This one instead had a clever little wolf spider set up shop in it. We all gotta eat. ✌️💛🕷️

We had a fantastic class with the Baldwin County 4H club this week! We were hosted by the magical Kitti Cooper at in Foley. They’re having an anniversary celebration tomorrow at the farm on hwy 59. Y’all go check it out and get some berry bushes and citrus plants because pollinators love them and they make food!

Did y’all know Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo has camps all summer long? I knew because they invited me to come talk to the campers about protecting the pollinators! ✌️💛🐝

I got to go to summer camp this last week at the Mobile Botanical Gardens Nature Blast and it was indeed a blast! Luckily the weather was good for checking the hives right after so all the kids got to see that from a safe distance and I was able to bring them a young drone to pass around. The drone was safely returned to his colony after being very carefully doted on. ✌️💛🐝

Today I’m grateful that I don’t have the time or energy to argue with all of the “well meaning” but poorly informed fools on the internet. 🫡

Yes, European honeybees are invasive to the USA. They’re livestock. You want to know what else is nonnative livestock? Dairy cows, domestic goats, wool sheep, chickens, pigs and practically every other farm animal you can think of here. Are they useful to humans, yes. Are they financially beneficial to our economy, yes. Are they tasty, depends who you ask but I say yes. Not to even mention domestic cats and dogs and the entire scope of animals involved in the pet trades. Oh and practically almost all of the people too, dang.

Do honeybees need saving? Absolutely not. Like I mentioned above they’re financially beneficial livestock and people will keep them going because we need them. We need them to fill the gaps in pollination that we have created with our industrial farming practices and other forms of habitat destruction. We also need them for honey, yummy. Can you imagine how much honey would cost if it had to be imported? It would be completely out of reach except to the extremely wealthy.

Can we rid the USA of European honeybees? Probably about as easily as we can rid it of people of European descent. So no we can’t. Should we monitor and manage their reach, definitely. Should we work to minimize their effects on the native populations of pollinators, for sure 💯.

Now this brings me to the “save the bees” movement, which should really be a “save the pollinators” movement or even a “save the insects” movement at this point. Deep down inside the “save the bees/pollinators/insects” movement within the USA honeybees shouldn’t even be of consideration, but on the surface they’re great for it. As a mascot for the movement honeybees get people considering ways in which to live a more ecologically supportive lifestyle which benefits the rest of the pollinators. Every little step we take individually to “save the bees” is a step in the right direction. If cute sweet honeybees can encourage people to use less pesticides and protect natural spaces then we all benefit. If people plant flowers for the sake of honeybees they’re also inadvertently feeding bumblebees, sweatbees, butterflies, wasps, flies, beetles, small mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and countless other critters including us on up the food chain.

We’re divided on so many stupid things. Don’t let bugs be one of them please.
✌️💛🐝 go do some good today.