David Sovka: Don't let my deadly allergy stop you from helping the bees

Three summers ago, I discovered I am highly allergic to bee stings. What gave it away was me almost dying.

It was that old love story you’ve heard a million times: boy meets bee, bee stings boy, boy goes into anaphylactic shock and rides ambulance to emergency room. You know the one.

You might think this little adventure would put me and bees in opposite corners. Not at all. I love bees and what they do for us, which includes making delicious honey, and pollinating about 70% of the world’s flowering plants.

No bees, no apples. It’s not overstating their place in nature to say that bees are critical to all life on Earth, which is where I spend pretty much all of my time these days.

Alas, as I’m sure you know, bees are currently on the ropes viz. challenges from mites, various bacterial and viral diseases, and, of course, pesticides. In British Columbia, the mortality rate for bees is about 50% every year.

If you also live on planet Earth and want to combat bee decline, there are a few easy actions you can take to strengthen your local bee population, even though it will probably result in my eventual death.

I’ve done the research, and present it for you here while you enjoy your morning coffee.

Kill more rabbits

Regrettably, I just spilled my own coffee on the first heading on this subject. It could also read “eat more carrots,” or possibly “plant more flowers.” I don’t know.

My wife says either way, the neighbourhood rabbits are ruining her garden/purpose in life and must be eliminated! I wholeheartedly agree because who wants to be accused of being soft on crime during an election year? DOWN WITH RABBITS!

Wait, this is about bees. It must say “plant more flowers.”

Yes, and that lines up with what the Canadian Wildlife Federation says: Planting bee-friendly flowers helps feed a whole range of local pollinators, including native bees, butterflies, wildebeests — damn these coffee stains! — moths and hummingbirds.

The CWF figures that if every Canadian with a lawn converted just a quarter of the grass into native wildflowers, we would increase the rabbit population 10,000-fold. No, they say we could add almost 15,000 hectares of flowers for hungry pollinators.

If you don’t have a lawn, you might have a patio or balcony or nearby vacant lot for planting bee-friendly flowers. Let’s be honest — plants are not all that discerning so long as they get regular sunshine and coffee, if I remember my high school biology class correctly.

There are plenty of online resources about which local plants to, uh … plant, given where you live, and even the best places to buy appropriate, locally sourced seeds.

This is all a little outside my wheelhouse as I am more responsible for large-scale earthworks at our house, which brings us to…

Be a lazy gardener

If all this gardening sounds like a ridiculous amount of hard work, you are correct. But that doesn’t mean the rabbits have to win, just in case you thought I was being soft on bunnies. Anyway, the basic tenets of lazy gardening are simple.

No more spreading fertilizer pellets, or applying pesticides and herbicides! In fact, don’t spray anything, except maybe processed coffee when the official, wife-sanctioned bathroom is too far away if-you-know-what-I-mean-and-I-think-you-do.

The point is that these chemicals are poisons that have caused massive harm to bees and other pollinators, so don’t use them.

In lazy gardening, you swap harmful chemicals to keep your property looking beautiful with safe and natural techniques, such as being a dirty hippie. Now you can wear overalls and chant: “Grow it, don’t mow it!” when the lawn needs cutting, and/or you need a shave.

Also, no more leaf-raking. Let the dead leaves lie where they fall/autumn. Apparently, leaving twigs and other detritus on the ground provides habitat for some species of bees and pollinating insects that are just as lazy as you. Yes, the neighbours might complain, but that hasn’t resulted in you returning the water blaster you borrowed two years ago, has it?

Basically, lazy gardening is a way of accepting that you do not live at Highclere Castle, and you are not Robert Crawley, 7th Earl of Grantham. So relax.

Bees, please

Finally, you can help bees by becoming a beekeeper yourself. Until that business of almost dying from a bee sting, I happily kept bees for years. The honey was amazing, and wearing the white bee suit was quite slimming.

Nobody knows why I suddenly developed a severe allergy, but afterwards, it felt like there were 80,000 bullets pointed at me from the backyard, so I found them a new home.

If becoming a beekeeper seems a little too daunting right now, you can host a hive on your property, enjoying the honey and bee antics for a rental fee. Vancouver Island’s Bees Please Farms does this all the time, all over.

They also – and I swear I am not making this up – rent out chickens. Obviously not to pollinate flowers! No, the chickens are to kill the rabbits. Or maybe to drink the coffee. I don’t know, as I said, my notes are a mess.