Bring in the bees to your garden – Native plants for nativebees - About The Garden Magazine.NativeBees of the ACT and NSW South Coast - Ecobits Australia. A variety of nativebee food plants were planted. Nativebees are essential for the health of our native environment and play an important role in pollinating plants. Honey bees carry on average 1,778 pollen grains on their hairs for cross-pollinating flowers. Long-horned bees have more hairs like many nativebees and can carry 104,152 grains. Native bumblebees are attracted to bluebonnets. The largest of the bees, bumblebees are buzz pollinators. Nativebees on the other hand, are typically solitary and live in the ground, in dead wood, brush piles or in hollow flower stems. They have no queen except for a few native bumble bees. A few months ago, Natasha Mantle gave a talk on California nativebees. Her presentation was so interesting I was inspired to learn more about our natives, and why they are so important. Most nativebees are solitary, meaning a single female is responsible for finding or creating a suitable nesting site, collecting pollen and nectar to feed her offspring, and laying eggs. This nativebee, and other important wild pollinators, help offset the recent die-offs of honey bees, called colony collapse disorder. Frank Drummond photo. Lauren Ponisio holds a vial containing a California nativebee she just captured in the Sonoran desert. (Holly Ober/UC Riverside). The question isn’t one of mere nostalgia or curiosity. "An individual visit by a nativebee is actually worth far more than an individual visit by a honeybee," Danforth added. "Honeybees are more interested in the nectar.
