It can be hard to quantify just how important bees are in relation to how we exist in the world. While wandering around the supermarket, picking up groceries for dinner, bees might be the last thing on your mind. But without bees, the fruit and veg section would look very different – as would your grocery bill. We spoke with John Prince, bee whisperer and founder of Rooftop Bees – which maintains hives for businesses across Australia, including Sydney’s Carriageworks – to get an idea of just how special these buzzy buds are, and what we can do to keep them thriving. 

“Bees pollinate 71 of the top 100 food groups that feed 90 percent of the world, which is a staggering statistic. Bees are so important to our survival, so much so that the United Nations actually came out a number of years ago and declared the honeybee as the world’s most important insect because of the role it plays in food security,” Prince tells delicious. 

It’s a sobering fact that without bees (of which there are 2,000 species native to Australia alone), agriculture as we know it would cease to exist. Entire industries like macadamias, almonds, strawberries, oranges, gourds and myriad more are almost completely reliant on pollinators like bees to reproduce, and every year beekeepers move hives across the country to assist farmers in their production.

“Without bees, from a food diversity perspective, you would start to notice a decline in the availability of all of our fresh fruit and vegetables, and you would also see a price increase on the shelves because it will become increasingly harder for the farmers to yield a high crop, which would then put pressure on prices.

“These tiny little pollination warriors are the unsung heroes of food security.”

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So what does Prince suggest we do to keep our little warriors happy?

“Try and avoid using pesticides and herbicides, because if you’re spraying your plants, the pollinators are going to come to the nectar source and in turn, take that contaminated nectar back to their hive which can decimate a colony of bees.”

At Rooftop Bees training and education sessions at Carriageworks, Prince and his team provide handy resources for natural and organic pesticides if you have to spray your garden.

“The next thing is planning out your garden. A lot of us have turned to convenience and simple gardening with more succulent-based plants that don’t necessarily flower. We need to change our mindset about that and look at putting a mix of exotics and natives that are flowering all year round. If you can give your garden a variety of different flowers that the bees can forage on that’s great.

“And then things like herbs are a really easy one that can serve multiple purposes, not just for the bees, but are practical for people to use in the kitchen as well. Plants like basil, borage, coriander, lemon balm, mint, oregano, when those herbaceous plants go to seed late in the season, they will be covered in bees.”

While a wild garden might look unsightly to you, for a bee it’s paradise.

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In particular, Prince suggests deeper-hued flowers, which are irresistible to a hungry bee. “Bees see in ultraviolet which means they have a reduced spectrum of colour compared to humans, but they can actually see more depth within the colours that they can see.

“If you shine an ultraviolet light on flower petals, you’ll start to see shades of colour, stripes and patterns that the human eye cannot see, but the bees can. The whole purpose is that the flowers are trying to make themselves as attractive as possible to the bees to encourage them to come down and drink the nectar which helps them pollinate. There’s a whole hidden world of colours and patterns just for the bees.”

Some final reassuring advice from Prince? “Being a lazy gardener is so good for the bees. Let the clover grow, don’t cut your grass, leaving bundles of stick and leaves – that’s going to make your local bees so happy.”

If you want to get involved in urban beekeeping or just have some fun while learning about bees (and eating honey), John and his team of Rooftop Bees will be at the Carriageworks Spring Seasonal Market on Saturday, September 14 from 8am-1pm. 

Head to Carriageworks, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh or the website for more details.

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