Beauty in Bugs
Ew!
Squish!
Ew!
Spray!
Does this sound like your yard whenever you see a new bug?
For many of us, from a young age we were taught that bugs are bad, they’re gross, they’re destructive and ruin the beautiful things we try to grow. And after talking about the European Gypsy moth last week, some are.
We don’t want holes in our vegetables, we don’t want defoliated roses, so every living, flying or crawling thing must die.
And yet, some are choosing to relearn that not all bugs are bad. Especially in the vegetable garden, some bugs are excellent for pest control and pollinating. Monarch butterflies are beautiful so we have learned to identify their caterpillars and try to save them if we see their habitat being sprayed or destroyed.
The Monarch is the perfect example of learning that something is valuable and going out of our way to preserve what it needs to survive. There have been several pollinator projects around the Collingwood area planting more Milkweeds and producing pollinator-friendly gardens.
What about the rest of the bugs in our garden?
Is there anything valuable about them? Are they worth the holes in our garden plants and avoidance of any insecticide so as not to kill them, along with the pest bugs?
Let’s start with a bug we know the value of
When we lived in Cochrane we had an apple tree in our backyard and every spring a circlet of Forget-me-nots would grow around it’s base. They would be covered in “flies” and I always wondered why there were so many flies around and so few honeybees. So I did some research and these “flies” were in fact Native Ontario bees. All this time I had been thinking that honey bees were the only bees other than bumble bees. I was wrong.
Beekeeper Beth, in my younger years
There are more than 400 native bee species found in Ontario (this website is a fantastic resource to get to know native bees better). These are the bees that bear the brunt of the pollinating work in the wild, and were the only bee pollinators before the honey bee was introduced from Europe. We have 16 species of the gregarious bumble bee (Bombus spp.), three of them are unfortunately at risk right now. There’s a project on iNaturalist trying to determine the distribution and population sizes of the different species. Can you find a Rusty-patched (Bombus afinis), Gypsy Cuckoo (Bombus bohemicus) or Yellow-banded (Bombus terricola) bumblebee in your garden this year?
Bees that nest in dead wood
Carpenter bees (Xylocopa spp.) are large like bumblebees and, as their name implies, they use wood to make their nests in. Without standing deadwood on a property they will use wood siding and this is where people often get their spray cans of insecticide out. But is it really their fault when we cut down their homes? They are a carpenter bee after all, this is what they have adapted to do. Let’s leave some dead wood around for them.
Leafcutter bees (Megachile spp.) are another species that anger gardeners by cutting crescent shaped holes into prized ornamentals, especially rose bushes. These leaf pieces are used to make their nests in fallen logs. No holes in your rose bushes may mean you have no leafcutter bees. And wouldn’t that be sad, to lose an entire type of bee just for a garden open day that only exists because bees pollinated your flowers and trees in the first place?
Sweat bees (Halictus spp.) also use dead wood to build their homes. They are called sweat bees because they are attracted to the salt in your sweat and will try to land on you to drink it. Apparently some researchers in Thailand found that they also drink tears, if you let them. They are tiny, and not aggressive, so they are not a threat in any way, shape or form. You do not need to squish them! Share some salt, they’ll pollinate for you gladly.
If you could leave some standing dead wood on your property, or, if you have cut a tree down, leave a large log or two to decompose in the corner your garden, it will be all the better pollinated for it.
Not just dead wood
Most of the time when we see premade bee hotels they are made out of wood. This makes sense considering we just learned about several species of bees that use standing dead wood and logs to build their nest. What I didn't realize was that these wooden structures can end up turning on our little bee friends after a couple years use.
The link for the leafcutter bees above brought this to my attention. Unfortunately many bee hotels trap moisture producing a fungal infection of the pollen provided for the nest inhabitant. This can then weaken or kill the bee. Conservation Halton suggests that if you want to use these cute wooden bee hotels they need to be replaced every two years because they cannot be properly disinfected. If you wish to use a more natural approach many native bees nest in bare soil, so leave some available for them in an out-of-the-way corner or your yard. You can also use the hollow stems of native plants in your yard.
Why in recent years have there been more and more suggestions about postponing your fall yard cleanup until spring?
All of those leaves, all of those plant stems harbour the young of next year’s crop of beneficial insects - bees too. Cutting and raking and burning and bagging send all of those beneficial pollinators and food sources for your yard’s food web away.
Even removal of invasive species can be of benefit because Japanese Knotweed and Phragmites both have good hollow stems when cut and dried. This way an invader becomes something useful for one or more of our native species.
“Solitary nesting bees need up to four times the amount of pollen and nectar for reproduction than hive nesting bees. They do not want to travel far to get it either, usually staying within 100m of the nesting area. That means they need a diverse native flowerbed nearby with plants producing blossoms from March to June for spring mason bees and from June to August for summer-season leafcutters.”
So our pollinator gardens can have a huge impact on native bee populations in our yard. Interestingly those native trees we learned about last week that are good for Lepidoptera also support bees with nectar-producing flowers, wood for their homes, and lots of leaves. American plums (Prunus americana) seem to be a fantastic all-round tree producing food and habitat for birds, bees, butterflies and fruit that we can enjoy as well. I’m looking to plant a couple trees this spring.
Another incredible fact that was unknown to me until now: bees use native plants to self-medicate. The Nature Conservancy has an amazing article about how parasitic load is having a negative impact on bee populations. But all is not lost, the bees can take care of it themselves as long as we plant the right native species that they need to take their medicine. To date, the only known flower to contain this medicine in the nectar is the White Turtlehead (Chelone glabra). Basswood and the mint family may also contain this parasite-busting protector. Check out the article for a complete list of native species that can help keep our native bees happy and healthy.
Tomorrow: more bugs than just bees benefit.
