Most people, except perhaps those who are allergic to bee venom, believe that honeybees are about the best that the insect world has to offer. Humans have collected honey and beeswax since ancient times, and images of these industrious creatures were painted on the walls of a cave in Spain 8,000 years ago.
Charles Frederic Andros, a beekeeper and former New Hampshire bee inspector, harvests more than honey from his beehives. He uses pollen traps to brush pollen from bees as they return to the hive. He eats quite a bit of the pollen himself, sells some, and saves the rest to feed back to the bees in early spring. Before the willows and silver maples begin to flower in early spring, supplemental pollen encourages the queen to begin laying eggs.
The value of honeybees as pollinators has been recognized at least since the time of Aristotle, who is said to have been the first to see that a bee, whether in search of nectar or pollen, will visit only one kind of flower on a given foraging trip. If it were otherwise, they would make lousy pollinators. Because bees are faithful to one kind of flower on any given outing, it is estimated that almost a quarter of all the food eaten by humans is from species pollinated by bees.
Andros can tell many kinds of pollen apart by observing which plants are in flower, the color of the pollen, and its taste. He seems to know where each and every bee has been. And though they don’t ignore native plants, it turns out that in Vermont and New Hampshire, honeybees make a good living from non-native plants, some of which are very much out of favor with the rest of us – the invasive exotics.
By mid-May, dandelions (originally native to Eurasia) provide the bees so much greenish-yellow pollen that there is some to spare, and it’s then that Andros places pollen traps at the entrances to the hives. By the end of May, apples (a popular introduced plant) are in full flower. A few days later, the non-native but well-named honeysuckles are producing nectar and a golden pollen. At about the same time, fields that are turned bright yellow by flowers of many mustard family members from Europe hum with bees.
Let’s not forget that honeybees are not native to this hemisphere, either, but were brought by early sweet-toothed immigrants from Europe. Though some have escaped to the wild, more often they live in rectangular wooden structures and pay the rent with honey.
Honeybees originated in tropical Africa and moved north to colder climes before being domesticated. They differ markedly from almost all other temperate insects in being perennial. They don’t overwinter in the egg, larval, or pupal stage like most other insects. Instead, the busy adults consume honey and use metabolic heat to keep their hives warm all winter long.
Bees love the tiny white flowers of glossy buckthorn, which blooms over a three-month period beginning in June and produces honey that Andros says tastes like almond extract. Other honeybee favorites, such as sweet white clover, white Dutch clover, yellow clover, and bird’s foot trefoil, are also imports, though their usefulness is usually thought to justify their presence. In early June, multiflora rose pollen is the dominant pollen in Andros’s pollen trap trays. He says it’s an orange-brown color, with a distinct rose flavor. In July I’ve often noted the bright orange pollen of asparagus (from Asia) on bees’ legs as they come back to my hives. Bees love that most dreaded invasive species, purple loosestrife.
This bountiful harvest, from one flowering invasive plant after another, all summer long, reminds us of how much habitat has been disturbed by human activity and has therefore become susceptible to the incursion of opportunistic plants from other parts of the world. Often, once having gotten a foothold, these plants move into undisturbed meadows and marshes, displacing yet more native species in a pattern that is distressingly familiar to us. Sometimes the speed and magnitude of the invasion of these plants seems incredible; that they are consistently held in check in their native lands seems almost equally hard to believe.
Now, in late August, some beautiful native plants – a succession of different goldenrod species that grow abundantly in the fields and along roads in Vermont and New Hampshire – are helping our naturalized honeybees prepare for winter.
Trying to rid the countryside of all foreign plants is, at this point, unthinkable. Picking the right battles – worthwhile ones with a chance of succeeding – is our only option. And for me, appreciating that bad plants at least occasionally have a good side, and that some of these foreigners are now as beloved as the honeybee, helps a great deal.