Apple and Blackberry Pie

 

Apple and Blackberry Pie

by courtesy of

Garden Wildlife Nurture




A box of fresh apples on the pavement, free to take...passersby stop. ‘Mmm... those apples look good! Shall we make an apple pie?... An apple and blackberry crumble would be delicious! Oh, it’s a bit of a bother, lets go and buy one from the supermarket.’ Whichever you opt for, the source of a delicious fruit is the same... a flower made fruit by a small insect... in these fruits, very often a bee. Frequently overlooked, taken for granted, but totally vital. The big, loud bumbling Bumblebees make themselves obvious and up front, like this one back in May - ensuring a blackberry is ready for that delicious autumn crumble


. A Common Carder Bumblebee

 was looking after the apple crop back in April.

The Honeybees


tend to get their well-deserved recognition... honey is delectable and labelled, and sometimes the flower nectar concentrated up by the bees and the area they were foraging get a mention too. But what about the others that might be overlooked as ‘also rans’? These are the many. Many sorts, many of them... the serious pollen grabbers... they are the solitary bees

– the dazzling variety at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew).

These are less prominent insects, not living in big colonies, but solo, or in small aggregations.



– Hotel resident Red Mason Bee females making individual nests in cardboard tube, bamboo tube. –

Two Red Mason Bee males fighting over an advantageous position to intercept emerging young females.

And you don’t have to be a beekeeper to nurture them and benefit from their services...

You just plant and share the pleasure of nectar rich flowers through the year, and these feed the visiting local honeybees too. Here, honeybee on autumnal Golden Rod


, brilliant purple, dark stemmed Salvia Amistad

 – with bee hanging off two pollen loaded stamens).

And you can offer them shelter from Winter’s worst in a bee hotel stored away from cold frost, snow and wet... more on that next week. Meanwhile, time to look for somewhere to nurture them – shed, porch, garage, sheltered nook...

Many of our staples and exotics of gardens and supermarket shelves depend on pollination services of a variety of bees –strawberries, peppers, papaya, citrus fruits, coconuts, coffee, melons, cucumber, squashes, kiwi, avocado, tomato, okra, nuts, grapes, Halloween pumpkins... 75% of the world’s food crops. And the plant nutritional diversity for us humans is enormous...

So, bees are worth nurturing!















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