This coming Sunday, July 20, I am going to the Melissa Garden in Healdsburg, CA with my Master Gardener group for a tour and lecture about bees. I'm very excited since I have been wanting to go and it is only open by appointment. It's only an hour or so from where I live. They do give classes and their website is quite good. Please go to their website for a comprehensive list of plants that make bees happy. I didn't want to put the whole thing up here.
I am happy to say some of the plants are already growing in my yard. I have been adding more every week. Although some of them are annuals, I plan to save seed then cultivate them in my greenhouse. Helping the bees is very important because they polinate so many of the foods we depend on to survive. You can only put so much fertilizer etc. Without the pollinators, we're finished.
I have decided to stop eating almonds. I love them and they sell these 3lb bags at Costco. But when I heard that they truck bees on 18-wheelers all over the country to pollinate the almond orchards, that was it. They are using them like a stud service. This might work for horses or cows, but millions of bees are dying.
