Eddi Minche, who lives in Tate City in Union County in North Georgia, is an avid honeybee keeper.
She’s also a plant expert, and notes that honeybees play an even more crucial role than honey-making — pollinating vast portions of our crops, orchards and flower gardens. The loss of honeybees (a worrisome possibility given their alarming decline) would be disastrous for farmers and our food supply.
But, during a recent stroll through the Native Plant Botanical Garden at Georgia Perimeter College in DeKalb County, Minche also sang the praises of Georgia’s “other” bees — our native bee species such as bumble bees, mason bees and solitary bees that nest in thick grass, soil or wood.
Georgia, Minche noted, has a whopping 532 species of native bees. The honeybee is a non-native, having been imported from Europe more than 300 years ago.
Our native bees, though, easily get overlooked: They make little or no honey, don’t live in hives and don’t form large colonies. But, long before the honeybee arrived here, native bees did the pollinating, and still do a lot of the work.
For instance, the Southeastern blueberry bee is exceptionally good at blueberry pollination. Three species of “squash bees” only visit — and pollinate — squash and pumpkins. Bumble bees are especially good at pollinating blueberry, tomato, eggplant and pepper. The blue orchard bee is much more efficient than honeybees at pollinating apples.
Bees, of course, aren’t the only agents of pollination, in which pollen is transferred from flower to flower to induce fertilization, which produces seeds, fruit, nuts and other plant products. Pollination also can be carried out by the wind, butterflies, moths, other insects, bats and hummingbirds. Some plants self-pollinate.
Bees, though, are the workhorses of pollination. But, like honeybees, many of our native bees also are facing declines from disease, habitat loss and pesticides. To learn more and how to help, visit the Greater Atlanta Pollinator Partnership at gapp.org.
In the sky: From David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer: The moon will be last-quarter Sunday. The only visible planets are: Mars, rising in the east at sunset; Jupiter, high in the southwest at dusk; and Saturn, high in the east at dusk.
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