Waiting For Bees

My key lime is starting to flower
In the past few days, my new key lime has started to flower. I've been anticipating this day ever since I planted it. In my former home, my tree produced large numbers of fruit and I relish them.  To me, having fresh key limes is one of the best things about living here in Florida. The tree will serve as a larval host plant for any giant swallowtails that might eventually make an appearance, but to be truthful this plant is here for me first and foremost.
Like so many flowering plants, my tree will need to be pollinated by bees to produce fruit and I remain anxious about whether any will visit.  To date, I have seen honeybees only twice in my landscape and only for very brief times. I have yet to see one now that the flowers have opened on my lime and I have watched for them periodically over the last few days since these flowers have fully opened. None of the native bees are visible either and it may well be that I do not get limes this year.
I am living in a virtual desert right now from the perspective of pollinators. Actually, that is not fair because a desert would have them. A honeybee may travel over a mile to reach a good nectar source; most native pollinators need to be much closer. The fact that none have yet to visit my lime tells me that I have a longer way to go before my landscape can support the life I seek.
Bees, butterflies, and other pollinators need habitat to exist and that requires much more than flowers to nectar from. They need a place to raise their young and they need land not routinely sprayed with insecticides. The honeybees I seek require a safe place to establish their hive, bumblebees need a decaying mulch/brush pile or a shallow excavated cavity, and many of the others need open soil to excavate their own. I have created some areas of mounded open soil for the green metallic and the leafcutter bees and I have built a small bamboo nest box for the mason bees, but they have not yet found me. It will take a lot for them to do so as my landscape is surrounded by sterile yards devoid of nectar plants and, I suspect, largely treated with insecticides for lawn insect pests.
It takes time and forethought to create a real oasis for pollinators. Over time, my landscape will have most of the host plants the butterflies in my region of the state require and it will contain many more flowering plant species. Right now, it is a work in its earliest stages and so I wait and hope that my lime will bear fruit before I have to wait until next spring.

Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 7, 2019 at 2:01 PM

    While reading this I thought of this: "Dotted horsemint (Monarda punctata), or spotted beebalm is Florida's version of a genus widely used in wildflower gardens throughout North America. It may not be quite as showy as some of those other species, but it is just as fantastic in bringing in a huge assortment of pollinating insects. When in bloom, you will see species of bees and pollinating wasps that you never knew existed in your area and it is a show not repeated by the use of any other wildflower." http://hawthornhillwildflowers.blogspot.com/2010/11/dotted-horsemint-monarda-punctata.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. YvonneFebruary 17, 2019 at 3:58 PM

    Your post tugged at my heart strings, for the barren landscape and for my friend who years for both pollinators and limes ♡

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ethics of Collecting Seed

Image
I've been writing lately about seeds and using them to create what is often called a pollinator meadow. A great many of the plants in my new landscape were grown from seed. Frankly, I have always loved sowing seeds and watching them sprout. I started in early childhood and I've been doing it since. It's rewarding and the anticipation of waiting for seeds to sprout is difficult to match unless you play the lottery. I rarely purchase seeds. I collect them. When I can, I purchase a few plants of a species I wish to add to my landscape and I then collect their seed after they bloom. If a plant doesn't prosper sufficiently to set seed for me, it is not a plant I wish to continue to grow. Over the years, I've tried a great many plants that I've failed to adequately provide for. Today in my landscape, I'm trying a few that I've never tried before. The exceptions come from plants that are not available in the trade. To grow these from seed, I need to collect
Read more

Wildflower Meadows - The Importance of Grasses

Image
A Natural Wildflower "Meadow" - Apalachicola National Forest I grew up in the prairie Midwest and was fortunate to have been caught up in the prairie restoration movement that blazed brightly in the last few decades of this past century. Very little of our original prairie ecosystems remain as the rich prairie soils were quickly converted to agricultural uses as European settlers swarmed their way over the continent.  These ecosystems are extremely diverse, regardless of where they occur. From the tall-grass prairies of the Midwest to the rockland prairies of the Mid-South and the true dry prairie systems here in Florida where I now reside, there are several universal characteristics - they are some of the most species diverse systems in the world and they are dominated by grasses. Grasses, in all their many shapes and forms, are what form the foundation of any "meadow." That must also be true for all the "wildflower meadows" I see extolled on s
Read more

A Pollinator Garden is More than Wildflowers

Image
A natural grass-dominated meadow in the shade Splitbeard bluestem - Andropogon ternarius Lopsided Indiangrass - Sorghastrum secundum Sites on social media that are promoting pollinator gardens are rife with posts about wildflowers. Folks seeking to make their landscapes pollinator friendly seem to be almost-universally focused on wildflowers. What these well-meaning people seem to not understand is the importance of native grasses. Meadows, prairies, and other wildflower-dominated systems are mostly grass. Grasses form the backbone of every one of these plant communities. It isn't the wildflowers. They simply provide most of the color - but a living landscape is not about color, it's about creating habitat, and this habitat requires us to incorporate native grasses. It is true that the vast majority of grasses, and their graminoid relatives, are wind pollinated. They do not provide nectar and pollen for the most part, but despite that they are significant. More s
Read more