Good Bee Sites

I JUST LEARNED ABOUT A COUPLE OF EXCELLENT WEBSITES DEVOTED TO BEES:
  • The National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service offers a page devoted to native bees as alternative pollinators. Did you know that there are more than 3,500 species of solitary bees in North America? Only a few species have been studied. "The best way to preserve bees and continue to gain from their pollination services is to preserve wildland," according to this site. However, they also offer an extensive table of plants they recommend for native bees. This website also offers information on a wide range of other topics related to sustainable agriculture.
  • Discover Life is another great website, with scientific information on almost every living thing you can imagine. There is an extensive section on the Apoidea, which includes both bees and sphecid wasps, a type of wasp that is harmless to people.

Incidentally, I found out about these sites through an email list run by an organization called the Wild Ones. This excellent organization is devoted to promoting natural landscaping based on local ecologies, but at present the membership is primarily in the Midwest and Northeast of the United States. (They have chapters in Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and one that is starting up in Maine.) As it happens, the Wild Ones Journal recently published a superb cover article about bumblebees by journal editor Maryann Whitman. Any bumblebee lover will want to read this!

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