We may not always be aware of it, but a significant portion of what we eat is dependent on one tiny pollinator, the honeybee. Honeybees are responsible for pollinating apples, almonds, blueberries, (etc). These creatures are often overlooked as one of the most critical components to our entire food system, whether that food system continue to be the commercially driven one we have today or the resilience based one that I detailed out in a previous post, bees are absolutely essential to its survival.
What is Killing the Bees?
It is easy to try to pinpoint the death of millions of bees in rampant cases of colony collapse syndrome on one thing, global warming, pesticides, herbicides, and so on. What most people aren’t seeing, however, is that this nationwide problem is not caused by one of these things, but all of these things, and then some more. In my previous post on food I detailed out why organic farming is important, but I failed to mention that organic farming is absolutely critical to the survival of our food system. When we stop using the multitudes of pesticides and herbicides to protect our delicate monocultures from collapse, we will eliminate one of the sources of stress on bees.
What can the City do?
Another very critical factor in the survival of bees is the availability of food to them. The landscapes that surround us are not natural and many of them could not survive without our constant support. The loss of native wildlife in the country is directly correlated to the loss of support for species that depend on these plants for food and shelter, and we are witnessing firsthand the loss of a species due to lack of these critical plants.
Throughout the city our landscapes are full of ornamental plants from Europe and Asia, and more often than not are surrounded by swaths of invasive turf grass. If the landscapes in our parks, along our roads, and surrounding our strip malls were filled with plants that are native to the Cincinnati and Ohio region, we would be doing our nectar-collecting friends a big favor. Even though these landscapes aren’t all connected, and a cohesive landscape also helps support larger populations of fauna, it would be a step in the right direction.
The role of Nurseries and Garden Centers
The two places that influence most peoples choices of what plants they want around their home or business are the local nurseries, garden centers, and landscaping companies that we visit every summer. What if, instead of promoting the same foreign and potentially invasive species of plants every year, these businesses started to promote species of plants that are native to the area? It wouldn’t be too difficult, really. These places could use graphics and sales techniques to make these plants more desirable to their clients, pushing the environmental benefits and the low levels of maintenance as a way of saving money. These plants are also more likely to survive in our climate, and therefore are both easier to grow and less likely to die once transplanted to a new location.
Who knows, maybe your local office park will replace that lawn which is never used with a beautiful wildflower prairie that blooms all summer long? Maybe your apartment complex will stop ripping up annuals every single season only to replace them with another short lived plant, and replace them with a palette of plants that will bloom during the entire growing season and require little to no maintenance. Maybe the county will begin to ban the sale and cultivation of plants which are known to be invasive or are potentially invasive to incentives people to use native plants. These are all reasonable requests and will play a critical role in supporting healthy bee populations.
The Egalitarian Urbanist 