Please Leave the Leaves!

by Lisa D. Watson

The other day I saw a person’s arm tattooed entirely with a honeycomb. Stylistically, honeycombs make super cool patterns (and tattoos). For honey bees, a honeycomb is an efficient architectural mass of hexagonal cells built from wax to save space for their babies and to store honey and pollen. I was a bit curious though and wished I had asked the individual if they knew that approximately 90% of bees don’t form a honeycomb colony (and honey bees are not native to the US). That’s right, most North American native bees nest in ground holes, amongst leaves, or in cavities such as in tree trunks or crevices in buildings.

There are approximately 20,000 or more known bees worldwide and the honey bee is only a small percentage. The Western honey bee (Apis mellifera) naturally occurs in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. American settlers from Europe brought these worker bees over to help with agriculture in the early 17th century. The East African lowland honey bee (Apis mellifera scutellata) was introduced to Brazil in 1956 in an effort to increase honey production. The 26 swarms that escaped quarantine in 1957 started to creep up North and were found in Texas in 1990. Africanized honey bees (hybrids between the Western and East African lowland honey bees) are considered invasive in Hawaii, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Australia, among other places.

For so many, honey bees symbolize environmentalism or even prosperity. Although they are important to agriculture, honey bees are kind of little assholes because they often destabilize natural ecosystems by competing with North America’s native bees for pollen. Honey bees are aggressive because their sole purpose is the survival of the colony and protecting their queen. Approximately 200 types of solitary bees live in the US, which make up 75% of the bee population worldwide. Native examples are digger bees, mason bees and sweat bees.

I’m onboard to “save the bees!” and like to occasionally have a teaspoon of the sweet gooey nectar, but the honey bees are least in need of saving. It’s our native bees that need our help!

In the Spring, whenever I see a bumble bee (Bombus pensylvanicus), I can’t help the tears of joy from bursting from my eyes. Seeing that teddy-bear-looking bee means it survived the winter and avoided careless gardening. Like the honey bee, the bumble bee lives in a colony. The difference between the two is that bumble bees are ground nesters and are not aggressive. Unfortunately, many Americans hire a mow-blow-and-go team who carelessly demolish the poor bumble bee's home in the ground.

When I hear those gas-guzzling machines, so many exasperated thoughts collide in my head and heart:

#1. Many of those hired “landscapers” know nothing about, well, the landscape.

#2. Gasoline is gross.

#3. Loud… SO, SO LOUD!

#4 Oh crap, now that the leaves are gone and the sod is mowed, is the herbicide next?

And,

#5. You’re fucking blowing away pollinators!

Along with native bees, I wonder what else they’re blowing away. Butterfly chrysalises? Moth cocoons? Beetles? Ladybugs? Fireflies? Most of these insects are ground nesters.

If there are gods, it’s our trees! If there are angels, it’s our pollinators! Trees supply shade and clean air for all of us. They also provide water and food for caterpillars, shelter for birds and other wildlife, and those precious LEAVES! When did leaves become such a nuisance? Our tree gods drop leaves for us to use as mulch to enrich our soil and create shelter for the pollinating angels. Instead, we blow and bag the leaves for the dump. Imagine if you were born a pollinator and woke up in a landfill. Ugh… We need native pollinators to survive! No pollinators = no food. We need our leaves!

Here’s what I do in an attempt to have a sustainable garden practice: My home’s driveway is permeable gravel. You cannot rake rocks. So I take our electric blower approximately four times a year and blow the leaves off the rocks into a pile. I take this pile of essential leaves and disperse them into the flower beds about two to three inches thick. If you’re fortunate enough to have trees, you don’t need to go to the big box retailer to buy mulch in plastic bags. Trees already provide you what you need for free! After a few years, our sandy soil is now a beautiful shade of brown.

It’s that simple! Leaving the leaves will help restore native pollinators and your garden’s soil!

And if you choose to tattoo yourself while creatively advocating to “save the bees,” skip the honeycomb and consider leaves.

LEAVES ARE DEFINITELY THE BEE’S KNEES!

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