Did you know that bumblebees have smelly feet? Photo / NZME
Did you know that bumblebees have smelly feet? Photo / NZME
LIFESTYLE OPINION
I am often woken by the sound of ducks having a full-on quacking competition, bulls trying to out bellow each other, lambs crying for their mother and on the odd occasion, the faint sound of frogs in the pond across the road.
It is nature calling and I often think how terrible it would be not to hear these noises. I wonder whether my great-grandchildren will miss out on hearing some of the wonderful sounds that nature lets us presently enjoy.
It started me thinking of bees, especially bumblebees. They are such important little workers on our planet. Without them, our food crops would be dismal.
I have seen a few bumblebees paying interest to my lavender and I get warm fuzzies to see them busily gathering the pollen on those little chubby bodies, but at the same time I feel sad knowing their life span is approximately 28 days . . . that is such a rough deal for the poor bumblebee.
There has been a decline in bumblebees caused by many factors including removal of wildflowers and flowering trees from the landscape, habitat loss, the mechanisation of agriculture and extensive use of pesticides.
A colleague mentioned she had purchased four small hives of bumblebees to give their cherries a better chance of pollination. So, what has the bumblebee got over the common honeybee?
Plant plenty of bee-loving plants this summer. Photo / Kellie Blizard
Well for a start they have smelly feet. . . yes, you may laugh but they do! This bad foot odour is a signal to any other bees, bumble or not, that the flower with the smelly footprint has already been looted. Once the plant produces more pollen, the smell disappears, and a new batch of pollen is ready for the taking.
The humble bumblebee can do 50 times the work of a honeybee, so when it comes to pollinating, I know who I would employ. In one glass house, a bumblebee can pollinate up to 450 flowers per hour. The bumblebee is especially important for tomato crops as they are big, boisterous, and able to dislodge the pollen from the flowers where the small honeybees struggle.
Do you know that in early spring the queen lays her first batch of eggs, all female worker bees and at the end of summer she will lay a batch of male offspring and a few new queens. . . how does she know to do that? Nature never stops amazing me! And then in autumn after mating, the males die off along with the old queens and her workers. . . what a life!
While our honeybees give us golden nectar our fuzzy black and gold bumblebees toil away making sure are crops get pollinated. We need to do all we can to protect our honeybees and bumblebees so they will be around for years to come.
So, this summer make sure you plant plenty of bee-loving plants such as borage, lavender, and comfrey.
