Vampire bees
October 3rd, 2007 - Posted in self-sufficiency, sustainable living - by Sarah|
When we first planted some crops in our veggie garden for overwintering, broad beans seemed like a safe bet. Little did we know that these flowers are a delicacy for the local bumble bees. Now you might not think that this would be a problem as, like all flowering things, beans need to be pollinated and bees are well known for this talent. However, the bumble bees are too fat to crawl inside the flowers to reach the pollen so they have developed a nifty trick. They walk up the outside of the flower until they get to the neck (where the flower joins the stem), they bite a neat hole in it and suck the nectar out. This not only means that they don’t polinate the flower as they don’t brush against the flower’s sexual parts but it also means we don’t get no beans!
Broad bean flowers – all with neat holes at the neck.
So we have given up on this batch of broad beans and today we pulled them out to make room for our new batch of Borlotti Firetongue beans. Even pulled up they continued to attract the bugs though. This fella seemed happy to sit still for a photo.
Green bug
