It all comes down to habitat. Or at least mostly. As I pile on years of experience, it’s become clearer that beekeeping is as much botany as it is entomology. I scout nearby parks and ditches all spring and summer to gauge which blooms are available to my bees. In concert with recurring inspections, understanding what’s happening in the local environment drives my decisions as a beekeeper.
We beekeepers have a short list of villains we tend to blame for the struggles of pollinators—varroa and pesticides usually top our lists. But these stressors pale in comparison to the existential threat posed by the loss of habitat. Most new beekeepers fail and quit before they begin to understand the interconnectedness of plants and bees, but successful beekeepers pay at least as much attention to habitat as they do to their hives. Imagine a human population without farms to feed us. Wild spaces with quality forage are just as important to pollinators.
A metric paper wasp foraging wild-growing fragrant sumac
Unfortunately, preserving habitat is mostly out of our control. I see so many wild or scrub spaces around me being converted to housing developments or—worse—storage units. These will be pollinator deserts, pushing animals and plants into increasingly smaller wild areas. As individuals, and even as a loosely organized beekeeping community, there’s little we can do to stop this “progress.” What we can do is manage the space within our control in a way that benefits our honey bees and other wildlife. Got a yard? Tear out the fescue and opt for something more natural and native to your local area. Remove invasive plants while you’re at it, because these tend to choke out the good stuff. Condo or apartment dweller? Get involved in your association and advocate for pollinator-friendly plantings in common areas. Can’t do either of these things? Volunteer or support a conservation group. The list is long, but organizations like Monarch Watch, Pheasants Forever, Audubon Society, and countless others work to restore and protect habitat.
Once you’ve established a habitat, collecting and sharing seeds can be a good way to positively impact a larger area
Our efforts and our support to conservation groups help secure a future in which our grandkids and their grandkids will be able to keep bees without having to feed sugar syrup year-round. They’ll be able to see butterflies and bluebirds without traveling to a National Park. The prospect of a bleak future is a real possibility if we continue to bulldoze wild spaces. The least we plebeians can do right now is convert our own habitat to be pollinator-friendly, and give of our time and resources to groups that help protect shrinking islands of habitat on behalf of the insects, birds, and other animals that depend upon them.