Sure, there’s a “day” for almost everything, right? Why should we care about, much less celebrate, those nasty, scary, stingy, buzzy bees? Well for starters, they’re responsible for pollinating a large portion of human food crops — and they are in trouble. They need us to pay attention to the impact of the massive amounts of pesticides and herbicides we use so reflexively, and to help them so they can continue to feed us. It’s long past time for humans to have a huge attitude adjustment toward bees and other insect pollinators.

But I’m not here to preach to you today. You can read all about the importance of pollinator insects and how to help them on the United Nations “World Bee Day” website. Here’s a little bit from their “Background” page:

_{Pollinators allow many plants, including many food crops, to reproduce. Indeed, the food that we eat, such as fruits and vegetables, directly relies on pollinators. A world without pollinators would equal a world without food diversity – no blueberries, coffee, chocolate, cucumbers and so much more. They also serve as sentinels for emergent environmental risks, signaling the health of local ecosystems.}

So the United Nations is doing their thing. My own contribution to helping bees and other pollinators is to help humans be less afraid of them. So if I’m going to get on my soapbox at all, my purpose is to convince people that they don’t have to automatically be afraid of insects. This is something I’ve only learned in the past few years, so I’m not trying to shame anyone for their fear. I definitely get it. But we can change! And knowledge often erases fear, so that’s why I keep talking about all kinds of insects here. (I’ve written about my own history with insects if you’re interested in that background and how I went from a bug squasher to the bug dork I am today.)

So let’s just admit it, most of us think of bees and wasps as those insects that are aggressive and that will sting you if you get anywhere near them…right? The truth is that we have around 4,000 different species of bees in North America, and very few of them are of any danger to you whatsoever. And yet we mindlessly tarnish all of them with that sloppy paintbrush of fear. What if I told you that this great golden digger wasp is a frequent visitor to my garden, and I can sit within inches of it and get absolutely no reaction from the wasp as I watch it feeding? It’s true. It has no reason to hurt me unless I threaten it. These are some of my favorites, especially when they’re on rattlesnake master. I’ve got a hundred close-up photos of this species and I eagerly await their return each year.

If we start paying attention, we’ll notice that they’re beautiful and fun to watch. Most of our native bees don’t even nest in colonies like the “dreaded” honeybee (which isn’t even native to this continent, by the way). Most native bees are solitary, meaning that each female bee makes her own nest and takes care of her own eggs, without the help of others of her species.

The other day I watched as the back end of an unidentified bee disappeared into a small tunnel under the mulch in my garden. I sat there with my camera for ten minutes, hoping to document her species, but she didn’t come back out and I had to leave. I put little plant stakes in the ground beside her hole so I wouldn’t accidentally step on it, and when I came back the next day, the hole was sealed up. As I understand it, that means she’s laid her eggs and sealed them up for safety, and her role as a parent is done. I love knowing that little bee babies are growing under that small raised mulch pile among my wild ginger, and when they emerge, they’ll find a garden lush with native plants where they can find as much pollen and nectar as they could ever need.

Here’s another cool thing about bees: they sleep in your flowers at night! Last summer I found this bumblebee napping in my blue lobelia.

I have lots of carpenter bees in my yard too — they’re the large black-and-yellow ones that look very much like bumblebees, except their black abdomens are shiny and not covered with hair like those of the bumblebees. I’ve gotten used to them hovering around my head every time I go in to my little open-sided garden shed beside the garage. For the past several years, they’ve been using the wood frame of that shed for nesting holes. They chew holes into the wood and lay their eggs in individual chambers they block off for each egg, after provisioning the chambers with food for the larvae to eat when they hatch.

Male carpenter bees can’t sting, and the females normally won’t sting unless you mess with them. I can walk among them without fear, and I usually even say “hi” as they buzz around my head.

Even though their abdomens are hairless, carpenter bees are still very effective pollinators. Check out how much pollen is being transported on the back and legs of this one as it crawls around on swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata). Pollinating my native plants is a sort of accidental service they provide for me as they’re feeding on pollen and nectar, and I often sit beside the plants and just enjoy the sounds of them working through a patch of native plants. Bzzz bzzz bzzz!

If you want to read more about how to help native bees in your yard, you might start with this fact sheet from the OSU Extension Office. They’ve got lots of easy suggestions for things you can do to make a big difference in supporting these important pollinators.

And Chris Helzer of The Nature Conservancy (Nebraska) has written a fantastic article about native bees and why they’re important. And he’s got incredible photos to go with it. I highly recommend that you pop over there, and maybe even subscribe to his wonderful blog, The Prairie Ecologist.

And the next time you’re outside in your garden or in a public garden or park, try to notice how many different kinds of bees and wasps you can find visiting the flowers. I think you’ll be very surprised…and maybe curious enough to start taking pictures of them and learning more. So…Happy World Bee Day! I leave you with more adorable sleeping bumblebees.