Building for Bees (Ep. 2)

Let your garden go wild! Not only will it showcase your personality, but your yard will provide the perfect space for bees to live. We had a terrific discussion about creating nesting sites and cavity spaces for bees, a small rant about pesticides, and dug deep into how thinking differently about how we garden can make a massive difference in bees’ lives.

Bees are diverse in terms of nesting habitats, but generally, 70% of bees nest in the ground, while the remaining 30% nest in narrow tunnels, twigs, beetle tunnels, or trees. Bumblebees are social bees that nest in cavities.

Thanks to Matthew Shepherd from the Xerces Society for sharing some great facts and advice on how we can “build” our gardens and yards to provide spaces for bees and other pollinators. If you’d like to learn more from Matthew about what insects need to thrive beyond floral resources, check out his webinar.

The Xerces Society has a wealth of resources on nurturing pollinators, including four simple steps everyone can do to help their local pollinators. 

You can follow the Xerces Society on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Did you know?

Matthew mentioned one of his favorite bees is the carpenter bee. These bees get their name from their nesting behavior. Nearly all species burrow into hard plant material such as dead wood or bamboo.

Transcript

Welcome to the Bees Knees. I’m your host, Jacy Meyer. Thank you for being here. Not all bees live in hives. In fact, most bees don’t. Most wild bees live a solitary lifestyle creating nests for themselves in their offspring. Some bees make nests in the ground, others prefer cozy spaces. You can easily create space for bees to live in, in your garden or yard.

And joining me to tell us how is Matthew Shepherd. Matthew’s, the director of outreach and Education at the Xerces Society, an international nonprofit organization that protects the natural world through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitats. Matthew, has a 35 year conservation career spanning England, Kenya, and Oregon and specializes in neighborhood level efforts such as pollinator gardens and small habitat projects and parks. I’m very excited to have Matthew join us today. Matthew, thank you for being here. Let’s start with the basics. Please share a little about the different nesting habitats for bees.

Yeah, the, I don’t know where to start because bees are so diverse and we think we know
scientists as people, as humans who study these, we think we have an idea. And in general we do, but there’s so many specific details that vary from one bee to another, that when I talk in generalisms, it is not like everything does this and everything does that because there’s all these different differences in between but in, in broad terms, about 70% of our bees nest in the ground. And about the other, most of the other 30% nest in, in a, in, in a narrow tunnel, in a, in a twig, in a beetle tunnel, in a tree.

And then there’s also bumblebees, which nest in a cavity that they’re, they’re a colonial bee, a social bee, because the huge majority of our bees are solitary. So one female is making her own nest. She’s not cooperating with a hive. She’s not sharing the workload, she’s just doing all the work herself and for the bees that nest in the ground, that means that she’s actually digging her own nest. And sometimes this might, might be four and six inches deep, but sometimes it could be 18 inches or two feet deep.

And I, I have heard of bees in the tropics, which, the scientists were trying to find out how deep and they dug down six feet, , and didn’t get to the bottom. And so they, they kind of stopped at that point. But, you know, the, the bees are, I mean, we have this image of the busy, hardworking bee, and these really are incredibly hardworking.

And so the, the mother bee has dug her little tunnel and then off that tunnel she excavates a series of brood cells. And this is, this is where she will put the nectar in pollen and lay an egg, and then she seals that cell. And for almost all of our bees, that’s the last contact she’ll have with her offspring.
The, the female bee lives lives three or four weeks, and in that time she may lay 30 or 40 eggs, each one in a separate cell. And after that she dies and her offspring will, will develop in the cell and they’ll remain in the nest for about a year and will emerge the following year at roughly the same time that the female was active.

And so in, in, in, in broad terms, that’s what’s happens in with ground nesting bees, um, with the, the wood or what sometimes get referred to as tunnel nesting bees similarly, the female lives only a few weeks and she’s only going to lay, a few dozen eggs. But in, for most of these bees, she’s not excavating her own tunnel. She actually just needs to find an existing tunnel and existing space. and so this might be a beetle board tunnel in a dead tree, it might be a hollow twig. You know, plant stems, et cetera, et cetera. And so she then collects materials such as leaf pieces or tree resin or pebbles or dirt, and divides that tunnel up into, into a series of small cells, supplies each cell with the nectar and pollen and lays the egg, seals the cell, and keeps going to make a series of cells down the tunnel.

And so, I mean, I mean, that’s a very broad, broad brush description of the kind of nesting behavior.

Now, what about bumblebees? You said they do it a little bit different. How do they nest? They do. Yeah. Bumblebees are a, a, a social bee and certainly where I am in North America, they are for, for most of North America, they are the only social bee. We do have, stingless bees in, in the, the tropical areas and they’re amazing, and I know less about them because I don’t live in the tropics, but, but the bumblebees, they have an annual colony, so the queen hibernates. She emerges from hibernation and will start her nest as, as a solitary bee. And she’s looking for a small cavity, something like a chipmunk nest that’s been abandoned or a moth’s nest is a, is is a great place for, for her it’s warm, it’s already lined with fur and it’s snug and in that area she’ll start making a series of kind of ball shaped wax and cells, and it’s in those that she lays her eggs. The food is supplied for offspring and so on. And then over the the, spring and summer she’ll lay more eggs and she’ll have her offspring will, will emerge in a series of overlapping broods.

And so she might have half a dozen in the first go and then 10 or 15 in the next go, you know? And so each brood gets slightly bigger and the, the, the bees from each brood then gradually take over more and more of the foraging. So it is a social nest, but it is seasonal. And so at the end of the summer, most of the bees will die and leaving only the new generation of queens that emerge late in the season and they mate with the males, and then all the old workers, the old queen, the males die, and just the new generation of queens go into over wintering.

So how in our yards and gardens, how do we provide these either ground nesting spaces, these cavities or little cozy spaces for the bumblebees, to nest? One of the best ways is just to kind of give up, trying to have an immaculate garden. That’s not saying much, much of Yeah. much, much of what I talk about when I’m, I’m working people, I’m trying to get people away from this idea that their garden must look like the pictures in the magazines or the, the television adverts because I, I’m one of the biggest threats to wildlife of all sorts, and, you know, bees and other insects are, are no different, is loss of habitat. And sometimes that is, you know, that big kind of visceral changes you see when a, a woodland gets cut down to mid, turned into a parking lot or, you know, a, a meadow gets plowed up and converted to farmland. But so much of the habitat loss is that small incremental change.

The gradual degradation that we don’t really notice so much because it’s still green, it’s still open space, but the, the use of herbicides, the use of mowers, the use of trimmers, you know, in, in our efforts to tidy up and make these places quote attractive, we’re doing away with a lot of the, kind of, the, the little spaces things that we are, we, we see as an eyesore that are actually so important for, for bees and other insects.

So wherever we can keep dead trees, that they’re great. We can try to keep bare ground. It doesn’t have to be a big area of bare ground, but we need to provide the bees, the ground nesting bees access to the soil so that they can, they can dig in and make their nest. And so, you know, putting bark mulch down everywhere is, is, is a deterrence to ground nesting bees. So, I mean, there are places where mulching is worth having. Particularly from perspective of, weed control or retaining moisture. You know, we’re, we’re all suffering from hotter summers and different shifting weather patterns. So there are times when, when we can be using these, but don’t mulch your entire area.
You know, just mulch the area around the plants where it’s actually helpful.

And then leave the bare ground for the, for the, the tunnel nesting, the, the wood nesting. Yeah, there, there are certain plants that we know have hollow twigs, elderberry, sumac, raspberry. Those kind of plants naturally will be providing the right kind of nesting conditions and so we can grow those and then just break or snip off the, the twig. Even just the annual pruning will, will create cut twig ends that, that bees can, can exploit.

We also can be doing what, what we’re calling save the stem. You know how typically the end of the summer before autumn comes and people go out to the garden and they start cutting everything down because again, they want it to be neat and tidy. And, and this is what they’re told. They’re told, gosh, if you want to have your beautiful flowers next year, you need to do this. And yet you don’t. I mean, you go to a natural area, you know, you go out and you look at a prairie area or a, or a meadow, and you’re not seeing those areas. The gardeners going around, sniping everything down.

Every year the, the plants stand up, you know, and so you can leave your plants tall, you can leave the stems up, you can be leaving seeds for the birds to feed on, for example and also just having those stems there, provides a bit more shelter for overwintering animals.

And then comes the spring. That’s, that’s the time to trim, cut down your stems to anything between about two feet high or eight inches high, you know, that kind of range. And then you are leaving the stems that the, the bees can, can nest in. And then you don’t have to remove those stems at any other time because one, as the, the, growth of the plant around it just covers the stems up.

And then you also need to remember that the bee nest could last a year. And so you want to leave those stems up and they will just, you know, in, within a couple of years, they’ll naturally break off and then, you know, when they fallen, then you can move them.

So there’s lots of different ways in which you can begin to bring some of that, the wildness, the slightly untidiness back into your, your, your garden. Another thing in terms of tidiness or untidiness maybe is thinking about what happens with leaves. The leaves come down. And again, we typically, there’s an urge to break them all up, sweep them all up, blow them away.

And yet the leaves are really a valuable resource for all sorts of wildlife. you know, if you, if you leave the leaves on the ground in your, in your flower bed, it’s pretty soon you’ll start seeing birds searching through them. You know, you’ll have finches eating the seeds, but then you’ll well, he, here in the US we get, we get toies and robins in Europe, you’ll start finding black birds and uh, uh, um, like house sparrows and such like down there picking through this area.

It’s finding food. but those are also, you know, connecting us back to, to bees. Those are also the kind of places where those overwintering queen bumblebees will go. You know, they’ll tuck themselves underneath the leaf litter for a bit of warmth and shelter during the winter, so that, come the next, the next year they can emerge and restart their colony cycle.

So there’s lots of little things that, that you can be doing. And it’s not like you have to convert your entire garden over to a kind of a wilderness. You know, do this where you can, you know, leave the leaves somewhere. You don’t have to leave them everywhere. Maybe the base of a hedge, the back of a flower border, the bottom of a fence, that’s a place where you could leave
leaves, stack them.

Some of these taller stems, you don’t have to leave them everywhere. You know, maybe those are more appropriate just to leave it in, in the back half of your flower border, or you know that back corner of your garden where your neighbors won’t necessarily see it and complain. So that, I mean, there’s lots of different ways of doing it, and if we all do a little bit, we’ll make kind of incremental changes. We can gradually transform our, our landscapes.

I also think that there would be an entertainment value in inviting the bees and the birds, as you said, to kind of live year round. Mm-hmm. , in your garden space because they’re there, they’re living, and you get to enjoy, the work actually that they’re doing on your behalf.

Yeah, no, I, I, I, this is what I regularly tell people, like, you know, you’re, you’re a gardener. You’re doing this. And make, make sure you take time to sit and enjoy it. You know, get, get your lawn chair out, your picnic blanket out. Take your morning coffee, your afternoon tea, your evening cocktail, what, you know, whatever it is.

But please do take time to sit and enjoy and one, because you’ll get the satisfaction of, you know, this is what you’ve done and you have this really immediate direct connection to an improvement. And two, you are also taking time. You will begin to see things that you probably hadn’t noticed before. And that’s one of the things about working, with, with bee conservation is that diversity of bees.

Because a lot of people, when, when you start talking to them, if you say bee, the first thing that comes to mind is, is probably honeybee, you know, a hive, honeycomb, queen, thousands of bees, et cetera, et cetera. Or if you ask someone to draw a bee, it’s intriguing. They will frequently draw something that looks more like a bumblebee, you know?

And if, like me, you kind of grew up with, you know, the, the illustrations in Winnie the Pooh, I dunno if you’ve noticed, and he’s always chasing after honey and honeybees, but the bees are actually bumblebees. Yes, yes. They are the round, kind of cuddly, furry looking bumblebees, aren’t they? Exactly.

So, so we have all these images of, of bees in our mind from, from a young age, but a very limited range of and if you stop and look, you know, even a, a fairly small garden could have 10, 15, 20 species of bees visiting it or living in it, but they’re not fat and hairy and they don’t live in a colony, they’ll be bright green or shiny blue, or they’ll be brown or they’ll be striped, or they’ll be, you know, only an eighth of an inch long.

And so all, all these things out there that you’re just not recognizing as a bee. So yeah, really important. Take time, sit and enjoy and observe.

I’ve read a lot about bee bricks and bee hotels, and using these in your yard to give, bees, especially the tunneling bees, a space to live. Is this something you recommend?

I, yeah, I do and, and I, you know, so I didn’t really talk about them when I was, when I was talking about bringing wildness back in because they, they can be a really good addition. You do have to be a little bit cautious about using them. There are some things to be aware of relating to potential spread of diseases within, within the blocks.

So, you know, if, if you want to have blocks, the ideal is that you’ll be cleaning them out or replacing them so that you are not building up, you know, there are parasites that will be living in there. There’s, there’s diseases. You know, fungal life forms and all sorts of other stuff. So, you know, building the, the, these bee blocks, they can be fantastic for biodiversity, but not necessarily for the bees.

They’ll be supporting a, a wealth of, of other insects and, and other life forms. But they are, I mean, I, there is a place for them because in many towns and cities, small spaces, there isn’t enough space for a tree. There isn’t enough space for one of those great hollow stem shrubs or you know, you can’t keep a dead tree up because it’s gonna be a hazard, you know?

So there are lots of reasons why, why bee hotels, bee blocks, call them what you like, could, could be useful. And they, they certainly have a space. I am, I am wary of these really big, sometimes you see what they call bee walls. Mm-hmm. , they can be really big structures with hundreds, maybe thousands of holes. And those are creating a density of bees that wouldn’t naturally occur.

And because there’s so many bees in such a confined space, you’re also creating great conditions for potentially spread of the parasites and the, and the disease, et cetera. And so smaller blocks are, are better, spread out a better, and for sure, either clean out or dispose of old blocks. Just, just, just hygiene.

Yeah. It’s like if, you know, if, if I didn’t, when my kids are smaller, if I didn’t make them wash and have baths right, they would be disgusting. You know? Same with bee houses.

You mentioned earlier about, loss of habitat and, what a large threat that is to bees. Would you say that’s the largest threat or what are some other threats facing them that we can perhaps support better?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, habitat loss really is the biggest driver of, of wildlife loss everywhere. As we’re transforming our landscapes, I mean, we, we have ever more power to do that. You know, it’s, you, you, you take a plot on the map and it used to be a, a hillside and it, now it’s just a plot on the map, and you can bulldoze it and you can level it, you know, and so there’s all sorts of reasons.

Land form is no longer a barrier to development. And so, you know, we are just fundamentally losing the, the, the green spaces, the vegetated spaces. But other things in particular for, for insects is pesticide use. I mean, we, we can’t ignore that. And in particular, insecticides because they are by design harmful to and, and with, with bees, we are trying to protect an insect. And so, I mean, there has been, there’s one particular group of, insecticides, neo-nicotinoids or just for short, neo nics. They have become, you know, it’s hard to find a word sometimes because they’re everywhere and we don’t always know that they’re there and we don’t always know that they’re being applied, you know, that their seeds are treated with them and you know, the seeds are sewn in the fields, you know, and that’s a, that’s a form of, of insecticide application that really isn’t regulated in any meaningful way.

There are sprays, there are ground drenches. You know, you get into gardens on the whole gardens. We’re not talking about treated seeds, but in gardens, there are sprays that are easy to apply. You can have ground drenches that you can pour out of your watering can, or attach a, you know, attached to your hose. And so the, the, the, the real thing about the neo- nicotinoids, is that they’re systemic. And what that means is they get inside the tissue of the plant. That’s why you can apply them as a ground drench, for example, because the roots suck them up.

And so from a, a, a plant protection perspective, that’s great. Every part of the plant is protected. From a pollinator perspective, that’s a problem because now the nectar and the pollen is also tainted by by that insecticide . And so we have the neo-nics , we also have a a, there’s now an increasing number of other, uh, products that are similarly systemic.

And the, they’re, they’ve been applied everywhere and there’s almost nowhere where our plants, our green spaces are actually free of many of these insecticides. We can take steps to reduce that in our own gardens, obviously, avoid using them. You know, it, it, it makes sense, you know? Yes.

Too, too often these are used for cosmetic reasons. I, because someone doesn’t want a plant to have a hole cut in it, or it doesn’t want the plant to have a, you know, a wilted bit or a, you know, brown spot or whatever. And so, you know, if, if you are going to have a wildlife garden, you have to get used to those kind of blemishes on your, on your plants, because, you know, we’re talking about bees, leaf cutter bees, for example, they make their nest by taking leaf pieces. There are other bees that will, will chew up plants and take masticated lumps of plant material back to, to divide up their nest and, and make their nest. And now we’re taking insecticides into the kids’ bedrooms basically. Yeah. You know?

Yeah. so, so it’s this insidious spread and so obviously avoid using insecticides yourself, but also think about the where you’re getting plants from to plant in your garden. Because unfortunately, these systemic plants have not just the insecticides are not just in the plants, but they’re very long lasting. They’ll last for weeks or months, and so you are buying a plant and you go out to your local garden center. You buy a plant, but you don’t know what that plant’s being treated with. And so, you know, you are taking that planting and putting it in your garden, and that insecticide is traveling over time and, and over space from the, the original grower through to your garden so you can chase down.

It’s harder, unfortunately, but trying to find plants grown without insecticides. Sometimes that’s organic, which doesn’t mean insecticide free, but it means less harmful insecticide. So there, there are ways to reduce the exposure of bees to insecticides. And that was a long answer on one topic, wasn’t it?

Because the, the other thing that we’re all struggling with these days is climate change. Yeah. I mean, this is just like, whew. Yes. Bigger than us, you know? Yes. And it, and it seems like, well, it seems so big. Like, what, what, what can I do? We need to be changing government policy, and we all nash our teeth at the politicians and we’re like, don’t have time to get into that and to change the government today, unfortunately.

But no, it’s true. I know. So some of these especially, well, I think about these insecticides. What kind of regulation can we kind of promote? To get these things changed or limited or, or at least so that people know, hey, these plants have been treated with this, and make it easier for the consumers to be knowledgeable buyers?

Yeah, I mean, from your last point about labeling or knowledgeable consumers and information that is beginning to change, because there are some plant nurseries now who are, you know, they promote themselves as pesticide free or as sustainable. and I mean, only the society, we are working with nurseries to change how, how they manage pests in, in, in their growing operations.

And so, I mean there, there is a, there’s an element that is already being pushed from, from the nursery end, but there’s also a growing number of gardeners and others, you know, not just gardeners, but you know, land managers, restoration ecologists, others who are doing habitat restoration and management projects who are also seeking what I mean, pesticide free.
What, what, what we refer to as be safe plants. And so, you know, I mean, I mean we, we think of a, we talk about the supply chain, or if you think of a, if you push a chain it compresses, doesn’t go anywhere, does it? But if you pull it, uh, right, right. That’s when it has power and strength.

So, you know, we as consumers have a, can really influence what is being sold to us. It’s not quite as direct as me going in and saying, I want this, and they’ll give it to. Because between the grower and where I, you know, the cash register, there are lots of other organizations. Yeah. The supply chain. Yeah. So yeah, so we are, I mean, we at Xerces and other organizations, Friends of the Earth and, and Greenpeace and, and, and lots of other organizations also pulling at that supply chain to change it.

But this is very much something that we as individual consumers, we are we can go to that point of purchase. And if the, the retail operations, the garden centers don’t know that people want this, they’re unlikely to change. To make the change. Yes. We have to use our voice that we can, we, we have this.

And again, it’s like, oh, does it make much difference if I leave this little patch of untidiness? Well, I mean, it does, it does to the insects that are using that. And you know, by us asking for something, it will eventually make a difference. But if we don’t take that first step, we’re not pushing, we’re not asking, we’re not, you know, wanting change.

Change doesn’t happen to use our. Speak up for the bees. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

So, do you have a favorite bee? Oh, they’re so beautiful. , I, I, I, yeah, I always go to and fro because there are some, like the, there’s the metallic green. Mm-hmm. bees, which are, I mean, they’ve been such an ambassador because people don’t see them. You say, you know, that’s a bee and they’re like, whoa. But I also really, I mean, I also have a soft spot for the small carpenter bees. Yeah. That are tiny, you know, quarter an inch, three eighth of an inch long, or maybe if I’m being European like that, that’s six millimeters, I can’t remember. Probably Yes. Millimeters that size. Tiny, tiny, tiny.

But, but yeah. But they are, I mean, again, at a glance it’s small and just a kind of a dark object going by. But you get close and they’re kind of like bottle green. Incredibly shiny metallic, but a deep, dark green. They, they’re one of the ones will actually chew out down the center of a soft stem to make their own nest.

And they’re also, as it happens, one of the few bees that actually may meet the offspring. Because the female is so dedicated that when she’s finished her nest, she actually places herself at the end of the nest. Wow. And that, that, that, that she, she’ll stay as live as long as she can, but otherwise she’ll, she’ll die, but she sacrifices herself for the safety of her offspring. She’s a barrier to try and, you know, gate gatekeeper to try and stop any parasites and others getting in. So, I mean, I’m like, it’s amazing. That’s beautiful. Dedication, incredible. And live in a, you know, in a very small area. So, yeah. Incredible. Love it.

Did we forget to talk about anything when it comes to nesting sites and how we can make sure we’re building for bees?

One thing that is worth considering and it partly comes up because I was just talking about the small carpenter bee is the distance that bees can fly. Yes. Because, you know, again, we think of honey bees and we, we hear of honey bees, you know, recruiting forages and so on, and they will fly a mile or two miles or five miles. You know, that, that they can fly a long way.

But many of our native bees do not fly that far. Many of them will fly only a hundred meters, maybe 200 meters at most, and, and some, you know, a hundred feet, you know. And so when we’re thinking about conservation and, and habitat and how we can put all this together in our gardens or our neighborhoods, or our hometowns or whatever, we need to be thinking about how far the bees can fly.

Just because, you know, where, where, where, where. I live near Portland, Oregon. The city of Portland was actually laid out with each block is 200 feet long, which for historical reasons is because corner plots were worth more rent wise, so they may gave themselves more corners. Ah, so this, this wasn’t done for bee’s sake.

It wasn’t done, it wasn’t done for bees, but, but if you think about it, a bee may go no more than two blocks from its nest. Yeah. And so you are thinking about this really surprisingly small area, and but that also is, is one so that we’re trying to make sure we have nest sites and, and flowering sites close enough together, but also because bees are not restricted to nature reserves or parks.

And so if, you know, if one gardener on every block is doing something good for bees. You know, you can begin to see that we’re, we’re, we’re creating a landscape that will support bees everywhere they go. And if you’ve got two gardeners on each block or three, all of a sudden you can see how what you do in your own garden becomes significant because it’s additive to what your neighbors are doing, and it’s on a scale that the bees can really benefit.

Because this is not something, it’s not like wolves, you know, which is all happening in some distant wilderness. This is direct impactful conservation that you can do quite literally in your backyard.

Such good stuff and so easy to do. If we’re willing to leave some garden junk scattered about our yards, perhaps not be so tight with our plantings, we can create a buzzing environment for bees to live and pollinate.

Thanks again to Matthew for the great conversation. We’ll get him back here again to share more about good gardening habits for bees. In the meantime, check the show notes, where you’ll find some additional pollinator resources from the Xerces Society. They do great work supporting pollinators and have easy tips on how we can help so be sure to check them out.

You’ll find the show notes, transcript and newsletter signup opportunity on our website thebeesknees.website. I hope you enjoyed today’s show, thanks for listening. Please follow The Bees Knees wherever you get your podcasts, and tell a friend. It means a lot, not only to the show, but also to the bees. I’ll see you back here in two weeks when we’re going to look at how one aspect of the climate crisis is affecting bees, excessive rainfall, and flooding. Until then, keep buzzing.