{"id":4624,"date":"2018-12-21T10:26:10","date_gmt":"2018-12-21T18:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregalder.com\/yardposts\/?p=4624"},"modified":"2019-06-08T16:53:29","modified_gmt":"2019-06-08T23:53:29","slug":"california-bees-and-blooms-a-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/yardposts\/california-bees-and-blooms-a-book-review\/","title":{"rendered":"California Bees and Blooms: a book review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

California Bees and Blooms<\/em> has become my guide to a more lively, colorful, and fruitful yard. Just a few mornings ago, I photographed bees collecting pollen on a California poppy flower, one of the first to open this winter. There was lots of buzzing and flashes of neon orange petals. The poppy patch is among my vegetables, and it is near many fruit trees, all of which will feed my family more through the pollination activities of more bees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You may remember a post I wrote last winter about the relationships between flowers and bees and the world of wild, California native bees that was opened up to me when I attended a talk in the summer of 2017 by Gordon Frankie, an entomologist at U.C. Berkeley. Frankie is the lead author of California Bees and Blooms<\/em>.
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(Last winter\u2019s post is linked here: \u201cOh, the mistakes I\u2019ve made: Thinking flowers were for girls\u201d<\/a>)
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Also contributing to the book are entomologists Robbin Thorp and Rollin Coville. And bringing expertise about blooms is botanist Barbara Ertter.
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A guide, not a textbook<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book is a guide; it is not a textbook. The full title is California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists<\/em>. A guide to what? What does it aim to help us do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the foreword, the question is posed: What happens when valleys and mountain slopes become suburbs and cities? You might expect a jeremiad to follow: We\u2019ve chainsawed and bulldozed so much native vegetation that we\u2019ve also killed off native bees.<\/em> Not entirely. The next words are, \u201cFortunately, as you will read, many of the state\u2019s bees are easily coaxed back into urban areas.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal of the book, then, is to both educate us about native bees and provide us with tools to act on their behalf.
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An education<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first chapter is indeed an education, and I\u2019ll admit that it does have more of a textbook feel than later chapters. In chapter one we learn basic facts about bees. For example, most native bees don\u2019t make honey and don\u2019t live in hives. Here our native bees are contrasted with the better known honey bees which were originally brought over from Europe. Throughout the book, honey bees are referred to even though they aren\u2019t native and they aren\u2019t the focus of the book. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also learn about the parts of a bee\u2019s body (proboscis, thorax, ocelli, etc.) and seasonal behaviors of various bees (foraging for nectar, mating, building brood chambers, etc.).
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Tools to act<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the bulk of the remaining chapters of the book is about acting, about how to do things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second chapter is about how to observe bees. You may think that sounds insulting it\u2019s so basic. But have you ever observed a bee by putting it in the fridge?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Catching bees<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I learned to do this from California Bees and Blooms.<\/em> In fact, my sons and I caught one of the honey bees I was photographing on the poppy flower and put it in the fridge. After about twenty minutes next to the cauliflower in the crisper, you can take the bee out of the fridge and hold it in your hand. It won\u2019t fly away; it won\u2019t sting. The bee is cold and sleepy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We inspected the orange pollen on its legs that it had collected from the poppy flower, we noticed the hairs on its back, the length of its antennae compared to some native bees. Eventually, it woke up and flew away.
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Kinds of bees<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book next profiles some of the kinds of native bees that we\u2019re most likely to see in our gardens: sweat bees, digger bees, carpenter bees, squash bees, mason bees, etc. The photographs included are beautiful and impressive and mostly taken by Rollin Coville. They are particularly impressive to me because I’ve been trying to photograph some of these frenetic fliers. Most native bees fly much faster than honey bees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is a long-horned bee that I photographed last summer (check out all the yellow pollen on that little guy!):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bee plants<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there is a transitional chapter that explains how bees use flowers and how flowers use bees. Following that, we have profiles of bee plants. These plants are the tools that we can use to attract bees into our yard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This chapter is an outgrowth of the Urban California Native Bee Survey<\/a>, where various gardens throughout our state were monitored for bee activity. The plants profiled are those that were not only found to attract many native bees, but can also be grown in most of the state and are easily available for purchase from nurseries or seed companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of these bee plants are native, some are not. Some require irrigation, some do not. Some are annuals, like sunflowers, which only live a season and then die; some are perennials, like ceanothus, which live for many years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of the plants profiled in this chapter of California Bees and Blooms<\/em> that I\u2019ve grown in my yard have definitely attracted many bees, both native and honey bees. It seems to be a very reliable list.
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