Bees, Hornets and Wasps of the World [visual guide]

Identifying bees, hornets, and wasps around the world.

Seed Bombs: A Bee Friendly Craft

Now, we know you're wondering: what is a seed bomb?

It's really quite simple. It's a tool invented by 'guerrilla' gardeners to allow them to get plants into areas not easily accessible or where traditional methods of gardening would not be possible. That abandoned, but fenced off lot? Perfect! An lonely median on a busy street? Challenge accepted! Guerrilla Gardening has a great page displaying several more inventive designs and a brief history of the seed bomb.

What we used in our was red clay, newspaper (optional), compost, soil and seeds. Essentially you want to create a thick paste that will hold the seeds and be fairly firm when dried, but is easily dissolved in water. In our mix we used Dutch White Clover kindly donated to us by Homesteader's Emporium.

All of the ingredients were pretty easy to find. Almost everything can be bought from your local shops. We sourced our clay from a craft store, but depending on where you are it can all be bought at a garden centre. 

Clover seeds! So tiny!

Once you have all the ingredients together, it's time to get messy! Get a nice big bucket and mix up your base with a little water, using just enough to make a thick paste. Once it's all mixed up add the seeds. Optionally, add everything all at once and mix away. You may want to get some small children to do this for you, they are excellent at mud mixing.

Tanya was kind enough to do all the 'dirty' work. 

Once the mix is ready, make balls out of them. We made about 1/4 cup balls, and laid them out in the sun to dry. We even had a little neighbourhood helper pop over while we (read: Tanya) were doing this.

Almost look good enough to eat! Just kidding, we had muffins and cookies instead. 

Overall, it's a pretty simple and fun way to get gardening.

If you want to know more about seed bombs check out the Wiki page on it. Heavy Petal also has a great step by step guide for seed bombs! 

Looking for some more ideas or supplies for gardening, bee keeping or just about any DIY fancy, Homesteader's Emporium is just off Princess and Hastings in Vancouver, BC. Not only did they donate the most important ingredient to our seed bombs, but they're also a great resource for finding supplies for everything from cheese making to bee keeping. 

Happy seeding! 

More than Bees (and honey!)

With the warmer weather comes all the joys of springtime, and among those are our friends the bees! To welcome these lovely creatures back into our gardens and our minds, BTF will be hosting a movie screening at Kiwassa Neighbourhood House. After the movie we'll be discussing the topics in the film, and how to keep your garden as bee friendly as possible. All participants will also have an opportunity to take home a lovely seed bomb made with bee friendly flowers. 

Mark your calendar for this free event on April 11th, 4:30 pm at Kiwassa. 

The Foreign Honey Bee

There are around 20,000 bee species worldwide.
North America has about 5,000 bee species.
On the West Coast we have approximately 430 species of native bees.
In Vancouver alone there are 56 different species of native bees...

And that doesn't include the honey bee.
Learn more about what caused the honey bee to spread from its European origin to the world over at one of our upcoming workshops:
beethefuture.eventbrite.com




Here are a few photos from a beekeeping class organized by the Environmental Youth Alliance. Thanks to Erin for bringing her amazing pizza box bee specimens to class!

All About Our Upcoming Honey Bee Workshops

The harvest season is finally here!
Join Bee The Future in learning about a bee that helped to pollinate your fruits and veggies. The honey bee is well know for its honey, but there are many other things to know about the hardworking bee.

Sept 20 - All About Beeswax: learn about beeswax, how it's made, how it has been used in the past and present and what are the benefits to this amazing bee product. We will be making beeswax lotion samples! Bring your own glass container. Snacks provided along with samples of local honey!

Sept 21 - Stone Soup (Lunch and Learn): enjoy an amazing stone soup! Bring a vegetable from your garden harvest or local vegetable to contribute to the soup. We will be making the soup as a group, and enjoying an engaging conversation about honey bees in this Lunch and Learn event. Bring your own bowl, spoon and inner poet! (There may be a small poetry slam)

Sept 27 - The Vanishing of the Bees: there is trouble in hives all over the world. With record disappearances of whole bee colonies, some are starting to worry about what this means for our food future. Join us for a documentary screening of "The Vanishing of the Bees" followed by discussion including solutions of what we can do to help the bees. Coffee, tea, juice and cookies provided.

Summer/Fall 2013 Workshops Announced

Bee The Future Workshops are back for Summer/Fall 2013!

For last year's workshops our focus was on the mason bee.
This year our star bee is theeee (insert drumroll)... Honey Bee!

Details on each workshop coming soon, with the release of our 2013 Workshop poster.

For now here is a taste of what you can expect:

Sept 20 | All of Your Beeswax!
Sept 21 | Lunch and Learn Stone Soup
Sept 27 | "Vanishing of the Bees"

We Wouldn't Bee Here Without You

We here at Bee The Future are honoured to have been mentioned in the Spring 2013 Vancouver Foundation Magazine.

Thank you to the Foundation for their support in our project!

Check out the digital version of the article and a photo on page 18 and 19:
http://digital.canadawide.com/i/134411

Release The Bees!

This is a much delayed post. The weather finally became beautiful and warm in the city so I took this opportunity to release the bees. Here's a photo-by-photo recap of how I did this and some tips on where to place your mason bee house.

Thanks BEE diverse for the cocoons!

 The Release Box

After removing the mason bee cocoons from the cool temperatures of my fridge, I crafted a little release box for the 10 cocoons.

Here they are looking like raisins nestled on tissue.

             Waterproofing... just in case

Because the release box was made from a cardboard I thought it would be best to cover it with something a little more waterproof.

Not the prettiest vessel to emerge from but it does it's job.

 Where to Place the Release Box

I had to figure out a way to attach the release box to the mason bee house. Gotta love string and tape. I wanted it to be close to the bee house so they would choose it as their nesting spot.

The release box is in the shade of the bee house, it should not be in direct sunlight. 







I put-up my mason bee house up in the south-west corner of my house, south-east would've been preferable but they will still get lots of sunlight here. It took 3 of us to put it up believe it or not... It was a very political process apparently. In the end it went up onto a post by our fig tree, about 5 feet off the ground which is the ideal height.

Hopefully I'll see one of my mason bees emerge!

Later this week I'll be opening the release box up to see what the empty cocoons look like, as well (and the sad fact) to see how many cocoons didn't made it through hibernation. Pictures and more tips on mason bee house placement to come.

Spring Has Sprung

Welcome back everyone! Like the bees we were hibernating through winter but are ready to spring into mason bee action again. Though it's not officially spring (not until March 20th) some bees have already hatched and are pollinating the crocuses and other early bloomers around town.

I haven't yet seen any mason bees, but I've been keeping my eye out for them. Have you seen any around your garden yet?

 

Can you spot the bee?

In the next blog post this week I'll explain how to put up your mason bee house and give you tips on location. I'll also be posting pictures of my mason bee cocoons that I recently put outside to hatch and release.

It's nice to bee back :)

 

Back to class: Mason Bee 101

Hello!

In our last event we had created a small booklet for each of our participants. The booklet was a compilation of all the information we had found while researching mason bees. Inside the book gives a quick rundown on each stage of the mason bee and what to do or what to expect. If you didn't make it out to our last event and can't make it out to our next one, we want to make sure you can get a little bee-education too!

If you CLICK HERE you can find our pdf version of the booklet.

Have a bee-utiful day!

Shhh Please Don't Wake the Bees

Fall is in full swing in the city. The  leaves are falling, along with the usual precipitation, and the temperature is starting its steady decline. No condition for a mason bee, so what are they up to?

Much like many species, fall and winter are the seasons of hibernation for the mason bees. 

Back around March and early April the female mason bees (that emerged in February) laid her eggs. Mason bees don't waste any time, reproduction starts once the female bees emerge from the nesting hole. The early stages of a mason bee is much like a butterfly, it also goes through a process of metamorphosis from egg, larvae, pupa (cocoon), to bee.

The larvae break free from their egg around late April to May, they gather up their strength by eating the pollen/nectar mixture that was left for them back when they were laid by their mom. Good ol' mom!

The cocoon spinning process begins around June and July, and throughout August to September the metamorphosis from larvae to bee slowly begins.

So that brings us to October, the bees are now fully formed and hibernating. After all the physical changes to their bodies over the past 4-5 months you can see how they need some serious rest. The bees won't leave their dormant state until the spring when the weather warms up to 12 to 15 degrees Celsius.

 
Check out Crown Bees website for some awesome photos of mason bees throughout the metamorphosis process.


Hope to see you at our final workshop this Saturday! We will be building and painting mason bee houses at Kiwassa Neighbourhood House. 
See further info in the right side bar.

Sweet Little Event House Revealed

The workshop is almost here! 

Have you registered yet? It's not too late, follow the registration link in the side bar and complete the short (1 minute, seriously) survey.

Just to be clear, as we have been asked by many, there will be no live bees at this event. Our mason bee friends are now hibernating until the spring, so there won't be any joining us.

Finally the moment you've been waiting for! Here is the sweet little house you can make if you sign up for the workshop at Kiwassa this Saturday.

There will be paint to jazz up your house for the bees.

So don't forget, this Saturday, Kiwassa, 12pm.

Beeeee there for the bees!

Mason Bees Vs. Honey Bees

When you’re the typical bee that most people recognise, a honey bee, a night on the town can be very expensive. A typical colony can contain anywhere of up to 60,000 bees so you can imagine the bar tab. Mason bees are a bit more shy and enjoy bee-ing by themselves, making for more manageable drink bills.

    If mason bees live alone, why would they want to nest in the bee boxes? Well, Dr. Margriet Dogterom’s book Pollination With Mason Bees, uses a very easy to understand analogy. She says to think of them like renters. Now most of us have rented in some point in our lives, or know someone who rents. A typical apartment building can house lots of people, and these renters may never interact. Mason bees are very much like this. Just because they live in the same building doesn’t mean they live together.

A Blue Orchard Mason Bee
Source - http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca 

    If you’ve just moved into an apartment building or are visiting a friend, it can sometimes be hard to find the right door. Mason bees have some trouble with this too! A mason bee house like the one in Tanya’s past post or like the ones we will be building ideally should be marked with colours at the entrance so bees can easily find their’s. It is suggested that grouped together houses have a simple design across the whole face of the box. For example a big blue X or a V can be helpful. It is even helpful to paint each tunnel with colour. The key is simplicity. One or two colours per house.

Just like our homes, each ‘apartment’ of a mason bee house is home to several bees from the same mother. This is where the depth of the tunnels comes into play. Mason bees lay their eggs in a particular way: females at the back and males near the front. A shorter tunnel means that there will be less female eggs laid, resulting in an abundance of males from that family.

   Once the bees lay their eggs, they seal up the opening of the tunnel with a mud mixture. The baby mason bees then begin the process of developing into fully-grown bees for next spring.

    It is over this time of development that we will be helping the bees along. We'll detail this in future blog posts as well as in a printable booklet to keep handy!



References

Dogterom, D. (2009). Pollination with mason bees: A gardener’s guide to managing mason bees for fruit production. Coquitlam, BC: Beediverse publishing of CPC Ltd.

Building a Mason Bee Haus

Finding your own space is hard when you’re a city bee. And it’s not the cost of living in Vancouver that’s the problem.

By building mason bee homes for bees we create a safe space that brings the bees closer to a food source (because commuting long distances is tiring for insects too), and it helps decrease the potential threat of pests (less break-ins).

This is a standard mason bee house. 

The house design is meant to mimic what bees look for in nature. The roof of course is shelter from the rain, but more detailed things are key for bees, like a good landing pad. By making the length of the frame bigger than the trays (you see them stacked in the house) you give the bees a place to land where they can take a breather before climbing into their holes.

Each tray has a row of channels that from the outside look like rows of holes when the trays are stacked. The channels are generally 5-6 inches deep; this gives the mason bees space to lay their eggs. Every website we came across about mason bee house design said to make the diameter of the holes 5/16 of an inch… I’m not sure how they figured this number out (picturing mason bees with little tape measures going from tree to tree).

Here is a video for a mason bee retailer that makes pretty spiffy houses. She gives a great visual breakdown on what a good mason bee house looks like.

Stay tuned for pictures of the mason bee house design chosen for the event!

For the Love of Bees

Hello!

Vancouver gardens were looking spectacular once again this year! And we can credit in part those “green thumbed” folks, but we can’t forget the bees. Not just the fuzzy little bumblebee, or the sweet little honeybee, we also have to credit the native pollinator, the mason bee.

Mason bee homes seem to be growing in numbers around the city, in parks and community gardens, but for those interested in getting into mason bee care, those little wooden boxes can pretty expensive to buy or seem a little hard to make.

Well lucky you for finding us. You can build your own mason bee home for free!

Bee the Future is a community workshop funded by a Vancouver Greenest City Grant.

Saturday, September 8th from 12-2:30pm at Kiwassa Neighbourhood House.

Look for the registration link in the sidebar! (Space is limited)