Native Plants for Honeybees

[MrILoveTheAnts]

"Native Plants for Honeybees" is now published and for sale at Create Space, and Amazon.com and for Kindle. The emphasis is on Eastern Natives Plants, though not quite as south as Florida, Texas, or as west as California. I know it's not really said anywhere but hopefully the big New England Aster on the cover gives everyone the idea. A few western natives are included but not many, and certainly not as many as I'd like to recommend.


A Brief Overall:
Is it Native?
The Evolution of Flowering Plants: How different flower shapes attract different pollinators. Some native bees will only use the pollen to certain plants to feed to their young, in a similar way that butterflies only lay their eggs on certain host plants.
Measuring Biodiversity: Butterfly Gardening, some of the other insects native plants attract, Leaf Beetles, Aphids, and their predators and parasites and such.
Ants: they make up 1/3 the total insects of the world by number (not species) so it only makes sense to talk about their relation with honeybees. Honeybee hives are often used by some species as nests, and the hives themselves are fountains of resources in many regards. I talk about the degrees in which ants interact with them. A lot of the invasive species can actually destroy a honeybee hive over night which leads into the topic of illegal trade.
Don't Waste Their Time: This is the best advise I can give to any gardener trying to get honeybees in their garden.
The Plant List: 95 pages of Food Plants, Flowering Trees, Spring Ephemerals, and Wildflowers honeybees use to get them through the year. Not all are commercially available but those that aren't are brought up for good reason. Most are available of course.
Book Recomendations and Native Plant Nurseries with emphasis on ones that allow you to fill up a shopping card and check out on your own. I hate nurseries that call you in person and ask for your credit info.

[wildwatcher]

hummph I did not know honeybees could read

hi milta, wishing you continued success with your publishing.

Happy Valentines Day.

ww

[dapjwy]

Congratulations on getting your book published, MrILoveTheAnts!

What a great accomplishment and a wonderful way to spread the word on growing native plants to a group that has a vested interest in their bees and may not have had an interest in natives--I bet your book could spark that interest. Thank you for getting the word out!

[dapjwy]

Originally Posted by wildwatcher

hummph I did not know honeybees could read

If they could write, the'd've published their own book!

[MrILoveTheAnts]

Originally Posted by dapjwy

If they could write, the'd've published their own book!

Bee Dance (Waggle Dance) - YouTube

Bee Dance (Waggle Dance) - YouTube

They can do math and trigonometry pretty well.

[Equilibrium]

Whoa!!! You did it!!! You pulled it off!!! Way to go Master Ants!!!
--
I’m thinking I'm gonna print off 1 page of your book with a big HUGE link to where it can be bought at AMAZON at the top and putting a stack of the pages at the community garden center. The community garden center is mostly super low income folk but…. the volunteers there aren’t!!! Oh oh oh…. and to me.... this book is totally awesome... 95 pages of food plants that are all native says it all!!!! It's well worth the cost of a black ink cartridge printing off 25 of those pages and stacking em up on the table because…. we need more books out there emphasizing the VALUE of using native plants in a way that ordinary people can "get". The page I had my eyeball on using was the page where you mentioned roses and high petal counts unless you think there's a better page to use.

[MrILoveTheAnts]

Originally Posted by Equilibrium

Whoa!!! You did it!!! You pulled it off!!! Way to go Master Ants!!!
--
I’m thinking I'm gonna print off 1 page of your book with a big HUGE link to where it can be bought at AMAZON at the top and putting a stack of the pages at the community garden center. The community garden center is mostly super low income folk but…. the volunteers there aren’t!!! Oh oh oh…. and to me.... this book is totally awesome... 95 pages of food plants that are all native says it all!!!! It's well worth the cost of a black ink cartridge printing off 25 of those pages and stacking em up on the table because…. we need more books out there emphasizing the VALUE of using native plants in a way that ordinary people can "get". The page I had my eyeball on using was the page where you mentioned roses and high petal counts unless you think there's a better page to use.

Well actually it's 95 pages of Food Plants, Flowering Trees, Spring Ephemerals, and Wildflowers. The food plants make up about 19 pages of that.

[Equilibrium]

It's been a while since I read it... I thought it had like almost 200 pages. I guess not. Oopsie!!! Who cares... the whole book was natives and why and you added photos of the plants so people could see with their own eyes how beautiful the natives are!!! I loved it!!! What do you think about my pick for 1 page that would grab the attention of anyone looking at all the hand outs at a table? I can't do color... my printer only does black and white or I'd pop for color cartridges.

[MrILoveTheAnts]

Page 105, which should be the first of Chapter 5: Don't Waste Their Time might be good. Or you could add a photo of the cover with a few select paragraphs.

[dapjwy]

Originally Posted by MrILoveTheAnts

Bee Dance (Waggle Dance) - YouTube
They can do math and trigonometry pretty well.

That is *wild*!

"There are more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of..." ...or something like that.

I think communication is an amazing ability that is clearly not restricted to the human species. I have to wonder wht other modes of communication will be uncovered the more we explore the subject.

Thanks for sharing, MrILTA