The other 4,000 bees besides honey bees | Column

Honey bees aren’t native to North America — but the wild bees that are will pollinate your tomatoes better if you give them a place to live in your yard or on your balcony. Peggy’s take: I live in a Brunswick apartment, and although I have a balcony, I hadn’t thought much about bees visiting the flowering plants I put out there. That changed this week, when an annual bloomed and a bee I couldn’t identify flew up to the third floor and nestled inside a pink flower. Now I’m watching for every bee that visits and trying to give them more reasons to. If you ate a blueberry, tomato, squash or apple this week, a wild bee probably had something to do with it, and that bee was likely not a honey bee. Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are European livestock, brought here by colonists in the 1620s. North America already had its own pollinators: roughly 4,000 native bee species, most solitary, most nesting in the ground or in hollow stems, and many better suited to native plants than honey bees will ever be. We’re walking the Habitat pathway this week — focusing on the practices about the land we share with everything else that lives here. The best step you can take for bees isn’t buying a hive or honey. It’s giving native bees somewhere to nest. Why native bees matter The U.S. Geological Survey counts about 4,000 native bee species, from the 2-millimeter Perdita minima to carpenter bees the size of a kumquat. Together, they pollinate roughly 80% of the world’s flowering plants, including many crops we eat. Honey bees are excellent generalists and indispensable for almonds and a few other crops. But a long-running Cornell study found native bees are two to three times more effective per visit at pollinating apples, because they carry pollen loosely in dry, fuzzy patches rather than packing it into tidy bundles that don’t rub off. Advertisement [](https://w2pcms.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/41505664_20230926_NativePlantsFilePhotos_.jpg) A bee pollinates a wild aster flower in Hallowell in September 2023. Many people and some communities are now making it a point to plant only native species that will in turn provide a better food source for wildlife and pollinators.  (Joe Phelan/Staff Photographer) [Purchase this image](https://dev.mainetodaymedia.com/smugmug/upload.php?data=%7B%22src%22%3A%22https%3A%5C%2F%5C%2Fwww.pressherald.com%5C%2Fwp-content%5C%2Fuploads%5C%2Fsites%5C%2F4%5C%2F2026%5C%2F07%5C%2F41505664_20230926_NativePlantsFilePhotos_.jpg%22%2C%22caption%22%3A%22A%20bee%20pollinates%20a%20wild%20aster%20flower%20in%20Hallowell%20in%20September%202023.%20Many%20people%20and%20some%20communities%20are%20now%20making%20it%20a%20point%20to%20plant%20only%20native%20species%20that%20will%20in%20turn%20provide%20a%20better%20food%20source%20for%20wildlife%20and%20pollinators.%5Cu00a0%20%28Joe%20Phelan%5C%2FStaff%20Photographer%29%22%7D) Tomato, blueberry, and cranberry flowers only release pollen when vibrated at the right frequency, a trick called buzz pollination that bumblebees and many native bees can do but honey bees cannot. That’s why commercial greenhouse tomato growers rely on bumblebee colonies, not honey bees. Meanwhile, native bees have been quietly disappearing with far less attention than honey bees get. The rusty-patched bumblebee, once common in the eastern U.S., has vanished from roughly 87% of its historic range and became the first U.S. bee listed as endangered in 2017. More than a quarter of North American bumblebee species are now considered at risk, according to the Xerces Society. A word about honey bees None of this knocks honey bees, which do important work. But keeping a hive is a hobby, not a conservation action — large, managed hives can spread pathogens to native bees and compete with them for flowers. You can do both, just don’t assume the hive alone helps wild bees. Make room for the nesters Native bees don’t live in hives. About 70% nest in the ground in tiny burrows; most of the rest nest in hollow stems or dead wood. Almost none are aggressive — most males can’t sting and females rarely do unless handled. A few ways to help: * Leave a patch of well-drained, unmulched soil in a sunny spot, even just a few square feet. It’s the single best step for the 70% of bees that nest in the ground. * When you cut back goldenrod, raspberry canes or hydrangeas in spring, leave 8–15 inches of stem standing or bundle the cuttings under a shrub for cavity-nesting bees. * Drill a nesting block from untreated hardwood (holes 5/32 to 3/8 inch, 6 inches deep) and mount it a few feet up in a dry, sheltered spot. Clean or replace it every two years. * Plant natives that bloom early and late: willows and serviceberry feed emerging bumblebee queens in spring; asters and goldenrod fatten up next year’s queens in fall. * Skip systemic pesticides, especially neonicotinoids, which end up in pollen and nectar at doses that impair bees’ navigation and foraging. If you do just one thing, leave a patch of ground uncovered by mulch or grass. It costs nothing and helps the most species. This summer, look for a sunny patch of soil to leave alone, pull back some mulch or tuck last year’s stems under a shrub. Native bees have been pollinating this continent for millions of years; they’ll keep doing it as long as we leave them somewhere to nest. _For more on the Habitat pathway and the seven pathways framework, join us as a Sustainable Practitioner at SustainablePractice.Life._ _Fred Horch and Peggy Siegle are principals of Sustainable Practice.You can pick up their new 2026 edition of “Your Earth Share: Seven Pathways to Sustainable Living” or any of their other publications at SustainablePractice.Life. Join their community of sustainable practitioners at that address for both benefits and books._ [](https://www.bowdoin.edu/?utm_source=TimesRecord&utm_medium=SupportingSponsorship) **The Times Record Sustaining Sponsor **We believe a community must be informed to thrive. [**bowdoin.edu**](https://www.bowdoin.edu/?utm_source=TimesRecord&utm_medium=SupportingSponsorship) Copy the Story Link Tagged: [bees](https://www.pressherald.com/tag/bees/), [pollinator garden](https://www.pressherald.com/tag/pollinator-garden/), [sustainability](https://www.pressherald.com/tag/sustainability/), [Times Record](https://www.pressherald.com/tag/times-record/), [Times Record Community](https://www.pressherald.com/tag/times-record-community/)