We plant a vegetable garden in our backyard every year with peas, lettuce, onions, green beans, zucchini, yellow squash, pattypan squash, cucumbers, various tomatoes, and peppers. Right now, the beans are coming in–Beans R Us!! While picking all these beans, I have been amazed at all the tiny, native bees that are all over the plants. I have never really thought about how all those bean flowers got pollinated to make all those beans, but now I know! It’s not the honeybees that do it, it’s the tiny, almost invisible native bees that do the work! I think these bees I’m seeing are sweat bees, barely 1/4 inch in length, and they are everywhere!

Back in June, I purchased a mason bee habitat and hung it up in the garden. Mason bees are another type of native bee that is a major pollinator of fruit crops in the spring. I hoped to attract some mason bees to my habitat so they would lay their eggs in it and emerge next spring to pollinate my garden, but I think I may be too late this year. However, someone has moved into at least one of the holes! I have no idea what kind of bee it is, but I’m pleased that someone thought my little habitat was good enough!

This is my mason bee habitat. Someone has moved into the largest hole on the left!

So thank you, native bees, for our abundant bean crop! I may not feel so grateful in a few weeks when I’m sick to death of beans, beans, beans, but right now it’s wonderful!