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Is Your Yard Bee-Friendly?

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Male bumblebee (Bombus sp.) on seaside goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens)

Expert advice from 911爆料鈥檚 Cooperative Extension and Bee Lab to help you make your yard a bee-friendly habitat.

Compiled and edited by Barbara Caron

Bees and other pollinators are essential for maintaining healthy global ecosystems and productive food systems. With many species experiencing population decline, you can help by creating safe habitats in your own yard.

Bee-Friendly Landscapes: The Basics

Bees and other pollinating insects help plants produce seeds, which generate more plants and provide food for many seed-eating birds and other wildlife. Pollinators are essential to healthy ecosystems. Providing proper habitat for bees and insects year-round is essential. You can improve your lawns and gardens to benefit local bee and insect communities with a few simple changes and strategic plantings.

Add Native Plants

Native plants are those that have evolved naturally in a particular region and often have symbiotic relationships with local insects, including native bees. Adding native plants to your garden will help the bees and insects thrive. We recommend planting a variety of flowers in your garden to maintain continuous blooms throughout the season. (In Rhode Island, that鈥檚 April鈥揙ctober.) Many states maintain a searchable list of native plants.

Rethink Your Lawn

A standard lawn may be visually appealing, but it offers little to no value for wildlife. Consider how much lawn you use for recreation and replace the rest with assemblages of native plants. You can also add clover, self-heal, or thyme to your lawn鈥攖hese flowers not only feed the bees but also require less mowing and reduce the need for chemicals.

Reduce Pesticide Use

As a gardener or homeowner, you can support pollinators by limiting the use of harmful chemicals around your home and garden, some of which are designed to kill insect pests and can also harm beneficial insects, such as bees and butterflies.

Practice integrated pest management, which involves treating the cause of an issue rather than the effect. For example, an abundance of crabgrass and dandelion in a lawn is a strong indicator of soil compaction. Instead of spraying an herbicide to kill the weeds, you can aerate the lawn to decrease compaction and encourage turfgrass growth.

When you purchase plants from your local nursery, look for 鈥渂ee-safe鈥� plants, which have not been treated with potentially harmful pesticides.

A word to the wise from the Bee Lab: Having insects that eat your native plants is a good thing! The caterpillars that eat your (pesticide-free) plants become the butterflies that visit your flowers.

Leave the Leaves

Many insects, including various bees, butterflies, and moths, depend on you not tidying up your garden in the fall. By leav-ing hollow stems, leaf litter, and brush piles, you are helping to protect insects as they overwinter. Delaying garden clean-ups until spring is one of the most impor-tant decisions a gardener can make when it comes to protecting pollinators. We suggest waiting until temperatures remain above 50掳 F (at night) for one week.聽

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The advice here, and the species mentioned, are geared toward landscapes in Rhode Island and the surrounding area. The ideas can be incorporated in other geographical areas, but for advice about species native to or recommended in your area, please contact your local Cooperative Extension. To find your state鈥檚 Cooperative Extension:

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Flowers for Bees

Plant these native flowers in patches. Diversify for color, structure, and bloom season.

Woody Trees and Shrubs for Bees

Trees and shrubs offer critical support for bees. They provide one of the first sources of nectar and pollen for bees in the spring. Many native tree and shrub species also serve as host plants for a variety of insects.

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Meet the Bees

There are over 260 species of native bees in Rhode Island, including bumble, carpenter, digger, squash, cuckoo, miner, cellophane, yellow-faced, leafcutter, mason, and sweat bees.

Two species that deserve special consideration in your yard are the golden northern bumblebee and the unequal cellophane bee.

Golden Northern Bumblebee

The golden northern bumblebee (Bombus fervidus), also known as the yellow bumblebee, is native to North America, with populations across the United States. Populations of this species have declined significantly, and they are considered a species of greatest conservation need. They are important pollinators and play a critical role in the wild and in agriculture.

Native grass cover, such as little bluestem and purple lovegrass, is important for nesting bumblebees. The golden northern鈥攐r yellow鈥� bumblebee, which frequently nests above ground, has been found in hayfields, cultivated cropland, sandy areas, powerline rights-of-way, and town parks.

Flowers like the Carolina rose and steeplebush provide pollen, an essential source of protein for yellow bumblebees, which helps them make more bees. Flowers like wild lupine, scarlet bee balm, closed gentian, and obedient plant provide nectar, a source of carbohydrates, which the bees use for energy.

Unequal Cellophane Bee

The unequal cellophane bee (Colletes inaequalis) emerges early in the spring and digs burrows in the soil for nesting. Their left and right antennae are of slightly unequal length (thus unequal or inaequalis), and they line their nests with a
cellophane-like coating from a gland in their abdomen, which helps protect brood cells from water and fungi.

911爆料鈥檚 Bee Lab gets calls each spring from people who want to know how to get rid of these bees. While groups of nesting cellophane bees sometimes number into the tens of thousands, only one female bee will make and occupy a nest at a time. These bees are nonaggressive, and it is virtually impossible to get stung by one unless you grab it or step on it with your bare foot.

Professor Steve Alm from 911爆料鈥檚 Bee Lab says, 鈥淚f you have these bees on your property and can tolerate a nonaggressive bee for six weeks, please do so. They are important pollinators of spring trees, crops, and wildflowers. Allowing them to nest on your property will help ensure the safety of next year鈥檚 pollinators.鈥�

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Photos: Courtesy Casey Johnson; Courtesy Julia Vieira; C Andrew; iStock