If course, if you're in Europe, honeybees are the native pollinators. At least around the Mediterranean.
Invasive species of earthworms from the suborder Lumbricina have been
expanding their range in North America. . . . Their introduction to North
America has had marked effects on the nutrient cycles and soil profiles in
temperate forests. . . . Some species of trees and other plants may be
incapable of surviving such changes in available nutrients. This change in
the plant diversity in turn affects other organisms and often leads to
increased invasions of other exotic species as well as overall forest
decline. They are considered one of the most invasive animals in the
Midwestern United States along with feral swine.
For mason and leaf cutter bees, a box sheltered from rain and filled with Japanese knotweed tubes (don’t grow it yourself, it’s highly invasive) works well for “I like seeing solitary bees around, but want minimum efforts”. There are tons of videos you can find on the subject.
Drilling various sized holes in wood blocks also often works. The nice thing about “solitary” bees (which are often quite communal), is they don’t have much of a drive to defend a nest, and would much rather fly away than bite/poke you. I’ve walked alfalfa fields full of them, and while the loud buzzing was a bit disconcerting, they couldn’t care less about me. Leafcutter bees are used for alfalfa because they don’t mind how alfalfa flowers work mechanically. European Honeybees will just chew through the base of the flower to get the nectar, avoiding pollination.
For other bees, there is highly likely to be a native bee enthusiast group in your local area that can give guidance on native flower mixes and possible setups for habitat.
Here in western Oregon, the hazelnut orchards on the sandy soil near rivers have actually become a great nesting place for multiple species of beautiful green metallic “sweat” bees: https://blogs.oregonstate.edu/gardenecologylab/2017/11/13/po...
They like the semi-compacted neutral to slightly alkaline sandy soil that’s clear of weeds, hence a long term orchard is perfect, especially as we’ve moved to softer insecticide chemistries that generally preserve beneficial insects. Offhand I think I start seeing them filling the ground with little holes in may when I start monitoring for Filbertworm moths.
And don’t forget bumblebees. While it’s a hated introduced weed for growers, it turns out that Sharppoint Fluvellen in the fescue grass fields is loved by bumblebees because it happily continues to flower in the late summer/fall when everything else has dried up or run it’s course.
Last year I was lamenting to a neighbor that bamboo doesn't survive the harsh winters where we live. He disputed that.
"There's some growing down the road, next to the ditch," he said. "It comes back every year. It's everywhere."
I was wondering what the heck he was talking about and then I realized it was Japanese knotweed. The segmented branches do look like thin bamboo, and he claimed that at one time it was sold at the local garden center as "bamboo."
Bumblebees do produce a kind of honey, but it’s much thinner and less concentrated than proper honey (which has had most of the water evaporated off by the wing beats of the bees).
Mason bees can be relatively easy: drill some small holes in a post and let it be. You can also get way more complicated with it.
https://colinpurrington.com/2019/05/guide-to-diy-mason-bee-h...
Bumblebee make nests for breeding, you can sometimes find nests in birdhouses or in gaps of buildings, but they apparently usually go for old mouse burrows. I've seen guides similar to the following, but covering a nest of dried grass with a clay pot, with a buried hose connecting the inside of the nest to the outside.
https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/20800500/BumbleBeeRear...
Planting native flowers and shrubs can also provide habitat for many insects.
They have many regional habitat-planting guides. Two books covering native bees:
Managing Alternative Pollinators
Attracting Native Pollinators
There are several severe threats to honey bees which without human intervention would cause a significant number of hives to be lost.
There's the varroa mite and the things it carries like deformed wing virus, then there is the increasingly prevalent Asian hornet which European honey bees are unable to deal with, and colony collapse disorder where the bees literally disappear for reasons we current don't understand, and climate change is causing colonies to starve over the winter.
Honey bees are not going extinct tomorrow but they are not doing well.
> Promoting honeybee hives to save pollinators is roughly the equivalent to building more chicken farms to save bird biodiversity
The other problems you raise are important but are also a treat to others bee species and insects.
https://earth.org/data_visualization/bees-are-not-declining-...
I wonder if it would be possible to experiment a bit - ban honeybee hives in a 10 mile square radius, or perhaps in that area that bans all radio transmitters. See what happens.
In most places honeybees are raised they couldn't even survive in the wild. Just like cows and chickens and pigs. As with most livestock, without human intervention they would probably be wiped out.
More dangerous in all these is the monoculture - a hundred years ago we would have a wide range of crops and livestock; now 90% of meat chickens are probably the same genetically; similar with cows and bananas and corn and rice and pigs, etc. That sets us up for a "wipe out 90% of chickens" risk.
You're correct about "breeding more" not being trivial, but they do it on an industrial scale. In really broad strokes: in late winter, in preparation for pollination season, they feed their hives intensively (with sugar syrup) and add extra brood boxes for the queens to fill with eggs. Then they split the hives, leaving the old queen in one box, and adding new queens to the box(es) they take off. Voila! Double (or more) the hives.
Pollination is where commercial beekeepers earn their living, by renting out hives of bees to farmers. Honey production is not necessarily an afterthought, even though it doesn't really turn a profit - it's worth doing because you'll be putting the bees on nectar flows for the summer, anyway, so you won't have to feed them, and extracting (some of) the honey covers transportation costs - but all the money's in pollination.
I could keep going and going - queen production and hive splitting are fascinating topics on their own - but I'll stop before I risk boring people with an over-long comment. I have commercial beekeepers in my family, and I've worked (summer / vacation jobs, when I was a kid) every part of the process.
(This is all in a USA-ag context. Beekeeping is - very! - different in other parts of the world.)
Of course nobody cars about wild bees, our lives don't depend on them nearly as much.
Tangential, have a look at a Gaussian splat of a honeybee I recently captured: https://superspl.at/scene/3ae6a716
I also noticed dozens of tiny half centimeter diameter holes in the ground under that magnolia tree which I guessed were little bee burrows. This sent me down a rabbit hole of trying to identify what type of bee these were. Long story short, there are way too many types of bees (30,000+ according to my research) for a non specialist like me to be able to pinpoint a species. But whatever type of bee (miner/sweat) they are going to go absolutely nuts when that magnolia tree blooms in the next couple weeks.
There is plenty of old fencing, a stack of logs, but they like my house.
[0]https://gardenbetty.com/carpenter-bees/
I have carpenter bees, mason bees, bumblebees, honeybees, wasps, etc including bees of every size. I also have planted my property in native plants and wildflowers to make sure these native insects have a place to hang out. I provide water for insects and wandering animals using washtubs with stacked rocks and solar powered fountains to discourage algae. I think that you could improve your chances of keeping the bees without them destroying your siding or trim if you follow the guidance about bee house placement.
You can make a bee house block or buy one that will attract multiple native bees and they will use it for years. Here is one option with additional info about carpenter bees.[1]
[1]https://www.thewallednursery.com/do-carpenter-bee-houses-wor...
The holes in the bee house need to be about 1/2" (12-13mm) if you are attracting carpenter bees. For mason or orchard bees they should be smaller, 3/16" to 5/16" (5-7mm).
However, the holes need to be deep enough for the bees to be safe from bee-eating birds. Otherwise, the log will instead function as a bee trap, allowing a bird to pick off one helpless bee after the other.
And aggressive honeybees still rarely sting. They typically just charge at you (which is annoying/disruptive)
If they are somebody else's livestock and they're attacking your person en masse, which law enforcement agency does one call? How much self defense is permitted?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002t686/my-garden-of...
(Wildlife film-maker Martin Dohrn is bee obsessed. He has found over 60 species in his Bristol garden and sets out to film them, with mind-blowing results.)
I tend to agree that the news cycles put too great a focus on honeybees in particular when discussing the decline of pollinators worldwide. However, I understand why the focus is there; they're an easy to point to example that the average person is familiar with, doubly so since most folks use honeybee byproducts regularly.
That said, insect populations are declining at a staggering 1-2% year over year rate. 40% of all insect species are endangered. Rates are declining significantly higher in both North America and Europe, concentrated near agricultual centers. There is some truth in honeybees outcompeting native species for increasingly scarce resources, but putting our blame on the honeybee is missing the forest for the trees.
I try to plant other types of flowers in my own garden, it's just that I have 1000's of fleabane and like 200 others, my little corner seems to be perfect for fleabane to thrive.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/323591.Dave_Goulson
I think I’ll let nature take its course here and enjoy the natural wild life.
It, of course, is trying to espouse that we protect the solitary and other wild bees, and I agree with them about that. It’s very, very important.
Nevertheless, this is a case of both not either / or being the right position. Why should we be advocating for one and not the other, or really in fact all flying insects, especially given their recent catastrophic declines.
But at the risk of being patronising, I wanted to say that we should all try to resist the "the author lost me when" reaction. I catch myself doing this too, but I don't think it's useful.
Reading an article isn't a competition where you win if you don't get your mind changed. Someone might have valid thoughts and opinions even if there are details of the article you disagree with.
Especially in the current climate, I feel like we could benefit from being a little more charitable.
but then I've also been told by a local bee keeper that the whole plant flowers for the bees policy isn't a good idea since that's how mites and other nasties can be transferred between hives?
Hopefully you are now less lost.
Bumblebees do just fine in most places, as they go after my geraniums like a fool with a hole-punch every year. We have several local variety, and they are an important part of the ecosystem.
The mite & foulbrood damage means most agriculture businesses euthanize hives when a problem becomes obvious. Hence why they also over-produce queens, as people know most colonies will not make it right now. The beekeeper community are some of the kindest folk you will ever meet, and people are doing their best given the situation. Have a wonderful day. =3
Mustard (Sinapis alba) is nice if you like pleasant smelling little yellow flowers, low-effort resilient plants, and spicy food. =3