Hap-Bee Halloween!

Today is October 30, and All Hallow's Eve is almost upon us!

Did you know that without bees and pollinators, this fabulous day would be a lot less festive?
But bees and other pollinators are summer things- they visit the blooming flowers and hang out in the garden on warm sunny days. What could they possibly have to do with Halloween?

Let me explain.

Simply put, without bees, we wouldn't have any pumpkins.
You read that right: NO BEES = NO PUMPKINS :(
No pumpkin pie. No carved pumpkins. No roasted delicious pumpkin seeds. Even many of the "Pumpkin Spice" flavorings come from plants that require pollination! (Examples here & here!) What would Halloween be without pumpkins?

In the summer, pumpkin vines have big, gorgeous yellow flowers. The flowers are either male or female. For the plant to produce a pumpkin, the female flowers must receive pollen from a male flower. That's where bees come in!

For most pollination, you may be thinking of honeybees. Honeybees, as well as many other bees, will visit the flowers of pumpkin plants and can provide pollination. But the shining stars of our pumpkin pollination are Squash Bees! If you're like most people, you've never heard of a squash bee, and unless you're personally trying to grow some kind of squash, you had no reason to think about these bees and they wouldn't be living on your property. They are specialists on squash flowers (that's: Yellow Squash, Zucchini, Butternut Squash, Acorn Squash, Pumpkins, and other squashes and gourds) and these bees don't eat anything else. So if you're not growing those plants, no squash bees for you!

Squash bees, courtesy of Nancy Adamson and the Xerces Society. How CUTE are these little bees?
They look very similar to honeybees and are almost the same shape and size.  

These special squash bees have evolved alongside the squash plants, which means they're perfectly adapted to the pollination needs of these plants. The flowers open earlier than other flowers and- not by coincidence!- the squash bees are also wide awake bright and early, before most other bees! The female bee forages on nectar and collects pollen to create a food supply for her young- who won't be born until next year. By midday, when honeybees and bumble bees and other bees are well into their foraging time, the squash flowers have already closed, and the squash bees have retired back into their underground nests.

Squash bees nest in the ground at the base of squash plants, but unlike other so-called "ground bees" (more on those in another post, as most of the time those are yellow jackets and not bees at all), squash bees are solitary. This means you're not going to end up with a HUGE aggressive nest of bees by the end of the summer. The bees' life cycle coincides with that of the squash plants. The bees emerge in summer, and lay eggs and leave a food supply for their young in the ground. Those bees will emerge the following season; thus, no huge build up of a giant nest of bees.

In the solitary bee world, the female bee assumes all roles of a "hive." She forages for food for herself. She is a worker bee. She creates the nest. She lays the eggs. At the end of the season, she dies. The male bees live the party life- all they do is eat and mate. Because these bees just live for one season, a large population doesn't build up over the summer time.

Beneficial ground bees like these are a prime example of why we need to be careful about what chemical products we're using on our property. Most sprays, granules, and drip treatments will soak into the ground, where these bees are nesting.

You can learn more about squash bees and pollination by visiting these sites:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/nov08/bees1108.htm
http://www.ars.usda.gov/Research/docs.htm?docid=16595

And let us not forget the significance of bats!

We often see bats represented in a scary way on Halloween. Bats are important pollinators of many fruit and cacti in the tropics. Here in Virginia, we don't have bats that pollinate our crops- instead, we have carnivorous bats that eat insects and provide essential pest control in our neighborhoods and to our farmers. If we lost our bats, we would definitely notice a huge increase in mosquitoes and other pests.

Let's hear it for our Bats and our Bees this Halloween!!