What's Buzzing in The Gardens: May

What's Buzzing in The Gardens: May

by Beth Conrey, Owner, Bee Squared Apiaries

Each month, The Gardens on Spring Creek features an article about what's blooming. This month, we have a guest writer to tell us what's buzzing!

Next time you visit The Gardens, be sure to check out my new honeybee hives located at the back of the Theme Gardens.

My name is Beth Conrey. I own Bee Squared Apiaries in Berthoud, and I have been a Gardens supporter for several years now. This year, The Gardens decided to install honeybee hives to highlight the plight of pollinators as well as to educate the public on the many benefits of bees. I am your Gardens beekeeper.

I have always been a bit “buggy”. I collected insects as my 4-H project and won both the Maryland and New Mexico state fairs with my collection. I stopped collecting insects and pursued a more traditional educational path, receiving my MBA in 1982. I worked in institutional foodservice for 20 years and then, one year, I got my first beehive. I was enamored. I was entranced. I was hooked on beekeeping and now, another 20 years has slid by in my second career as a beekeeper.

Beth delivered the hives late last month

Bee Squared Apiaries manages more than 100 colonies of bees from the roof of the Denver Botanic Gardens to Silver Reef organic farm in Wellington. We continue to expand hive locations and would like to eventually reach somewhere in the 200 colony range. We love partnerships with like-minded organizations and institutions! It is also becoming more and more difficult to find “safe” places for bees and The Gardens offers an opportunity to buffer bees from many of their stressors: pesticides, poor forage, pests and pathogens.

Colorado is home to over 930 species of bees! Yes, you read that correctly! Most of these bees are solitary bees that live in little holes in the ground or in the hollow stems of plants. Many of these are gregarious bees meaning that they live in large groups—but are still solitary. Some of these bees, such as bumblebees, live in small colonies. Only one, Apis mellifera, lives as a large perennial colony.

Beth installed two hives along the back fence at The Gardens

It is the ability to function as a colony that allows them to produce honey! And did you know that a honeybee produces only 1/12^th – yes one twelfth - of a teaspoon of honey in its short life? Or that it takes 2 MILLION flowers to produce a single pound of honey?

On your next visit, look closely at the insects in the Gardens and discover how many pollinator species you can see. You will be surprised!

Gardens on Spring Creek Hive Information:

Number of Hives: Two
Type of Hive: Langstroth
(Beautiful copper top / copper cornered hives made by my husband, Mike.)
Installation Date: April 27, 2020

Hornworms by Brionna McCumber

Gardeners in Colorado may find large green caterpillars with an iconic horn on their plants every summer—these are hornworms! Tobacco hornworms ( Manduca sexta ) feed on common garden crops, often leading to conflict with humans. These very hungry caterpillars are defoliators, damaging plants such as tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, and eggplant. While the caterpillars use crops as a food source, which could be seen as negative, the moths provide a critical step in reproduction for the plants via pollination. Carolina Sphinx Moths ( Manduca sexta ), also called Hummingbird moths, are the adult form of hornworm s. They are known for their unique ability to hover mid-flight. Combined with the use of a special elongated proboscis, these moths are especially important for plant species with long tubular flowers that other pollinators cannot access or pollinate. The Gardens on Spring Creek Butterfly House wants to highlight the importance of these specialized pollinators in our...

Winter Watering by Bryan Fischer

O ne of the brightest spots of living on the Front Range of Colorado is its winters. With more than 300 days of sunshine annually, we seldom see extended periods of the grey, chilly, precipitating skies common in so much of the country. It’s not unusual for daily highs to make it above 50 degrees. Much of this we have our elevation and distance from an ocean to thank – our sunlight is more intense than at sea level and our humidity lower, resulting in greater warming during the day compared to regions of similar latitude to our east or near a coastline .  Unfortunately for many landscape plants, however, that same day-night temperature differential spells trouble when paired with our lack of soil-insulating snow cover.  The resulting environment of warm days, frequent wind , and intense sun increases water demand, while low humidity saps the soil moisture reserves that our limited precipitation may provide. As a result, our landscape plants are predisposed to dehydration-indu...

Conifers: Pining for Something Different by Bryan Fischer

Evolving considerably earlier than flowering plants (angiosperms), conifers represent a long-lived and successful lineage of trees classified as gymnosperms. Gymnosperms were among the first true seed-bearing plants and evolved before specialized pollinators existed, so they are typically wind-pollinated. Seeds on these plants are produced between or on scale-like structures (think pine cone scales), rather than in fully enclosed structures, like tomato fruits. Gymnosperm, in fact, is Greek for “naked seeds,” so just imagine what that might imply for the origin of the word “gymnasium” … Long-lived, adaptable and attractive year-round, conifers represent a silver bullet of sorts for our Colorado gardens. Sadly, the overuse of just a few species and cultivars of these plants has given them a bad name. Don’t be put off – judicious use of conifers makes perennial plantings “pop” and provides structural bones during the fall and winter months. Below, find a selection of underused, adap...

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