go as they please, pollinating your vegetables and fruit trees, increasing yields, and leaving behind a legacy of bountiful harvests.
Build a Swarm Box for Bees
If you want to dive into urban beekeeping or invite bees into your ecosystem, start by attracting a swarm to your garden. It’s not as scary as it sounds. You can order bees by mail, but it’s expensive. It’s actually better to attract a swarm that may be passing through or one that frequents your yard already. When a swarm is looking for a new home, the bees are at the least aggressive stage in life because they don’t have a home or offspring to protect. A swarm box provides a temporary habitat (instead of inside your wall or water-meter box) in which bees can congregate. Once you’ve collected a swarm in the box, you (or, better yet, a local beekeeper) can transfer the colony to a proper hive that will live on your property.
HoneyLove (HoneyLove.org), a nonprofit urban beekeeping organization in Los Angeles, California, is on a mission to educate residents about keeping bees. HoneyLove was instrumental in the effort to legalize beekeeping in Los Angeles and spends countless hours rescuing bees from “unsupported” locations. If a homeowner finds a swarm living in his or her walls, HoneyLove is one of many organizations that will come and remove the colony without killing the bees. The founders of HoneyLove strive to find a home for the bees with a farmer or homeowner in an area where beekeeping is legal.
Basic swarm box
Rob McFarland of HoneyLove explains that “swarming happens when a thriving colony of bees has outgrown its home. The existing queen and 60 percent of the worker bees exit the hive in search of a new dark, hollow space to colonize, leaving the remaining bees with all the essentials to build the colony back up—honey, pollen, brood (baby bees), and a virgin queen.” Swarm boxes can be made from a plethora of materials, including untreated wood (no particle board, please), cardboard boxes, and even wicker baskets. The bees are looking for a hollow cavity with a capacity of between 8 and 10 1/2 gallons (30 and 40 L), which equates to a box about 10 inches (25 cm) high x 20 inches (51 cm) wide x 10 inches (25 cm) deep. Be sure to include a small access hole (about 1¼ inches [3 cm] in diameter) on one side of the box, near the bottom. You’ll also need a way to cover the hole once bees inhabit the box. You’ll screw rather than nail on the top of the box to make it easier to open the container when it’s full of bees.
Some sources suggest hanging foundationless frames inside the box. These are either strips of wood that sit along the top, inside the box (usually coated with a narrow line of beeswax to encourage bees to build a comb there), or wood frames that do not contain a starter sheet of beeswax. The box shown doesn’t use frames or strips.
A swarm of bees hangs from a tree branch.
Indigenous communities have made swarm boxes out of wicker baskets (such as small office-sized wastebaskets), each covered securely with a sheet of plywood on top. These baskets, as well as the more formal wooden boxes, can be attached to trees for awaiting bees. To do so, nail a flat piece of wood to the back of the swarm box that extends above the box for several inches (7 or 8 cm). Drill a ½-inch (1.25-cm) hole in the extension and hang it on a tree from a nail. You can also secure it on a thick branch. Either way, you will want to make it easy to remove the box when it is full of bees.
There are two other key ingredients in the swarm box: a cotton swab with a dab of lemongrass oil inside and a nearby source of water. Lemongrass mimics the scent of the queen’s pheromones, and bees get thirsty and will go elsewhere unless they have access to water. Check your swarm box weekly for a colony and, when it’s been colonized, get help moving the bees to a proper hive box—and then get ready for higher yields in the garden.
To encourage bees and other beneficial insects, grow beneficial flowers. What the heck are those, you ask? Let’s take a closer look.
Beneficial Flowers and Their Friends
Some beneficial flowers attract pollinators, such as bees and wasps, to the garden. Other types of flowers attract insect predators, such as parasitic wasps (about the size of a gnat) and praying mantises. Still another type of flower works like a trap crop, excreting an odor that attracts pests to the plant instead of your valuable crops. Calendula or nasturtiums, for example, are reliable trap crops, because they have a strong scent, and it isn’t uncommon to find them infested with aphids. Great! Leave those aphids right there. Now they aren’t destroying your broccoli plants. With trap crops, you can isolate pests to one area of your garden and avoid using sprays to control their populations.
Nasturtiums act as a trap crop to lure pests to their flowers instead of your veggies.
Calendula and hyacinth feed pollinators.
No More Pests?
Why not just wipe pests out altogether? Good question—and the answer is even better. If you eliminate pests completely, then the beneficial insects will have nothing to eat. Remember, your ecosystem is all about balance. Have the right balance of ingredients (in this case, pests versus beneficial insects), and your garden will achieve a balance all its own. You won’t have to work as hard to keep pests under control, and you’ll be able to enjoy more of your harvest in an unmolested state. We’ll discuss specific plants to include in your ecosystem in Chapter 9 in the Good Bugs versus Bad Bugs section. For now, just know that planting flowers can be beneficial to your garden’s health.
Where should you plant them? Just like trees, beneficial flowers function wonderfully as a hedge or border to your garden. Plant flowers around the perimeter to encourage insects to make a home there. Flowers can also be planted between crops to assist with pest control in planter beds. A combination of both scenarios will help ensure balance.
Nerd alert! A sundial watch and a compass ring can be handy, easy-to-carry garden tools.
Garden Orientation
Get out your compass; it’s time to determine the best orientation for your garden. If you live in the northern hemisphere, a south-facing garden is best (in the southern hemisphere, of course, the opposite is true). The sun rises in the east, and because the earth’s axis is tilted, the sun travels across the sky from east to west at a southerly angle. Therefore, if your garden is situated so that it is exposed to that southerly arc of the sun’s path, your garden will get the full-sun exposure—at least six hours per day—that is required to grow vegetables. Many times, situating a garden at the northernmost point of the yard allows for the best southerly exposure. If your yard is shadowed by trees or tall buildings, the best location for a garden may indeed be your front yard. The open streets often allow for unobstructed full-sun gardening.
In the winter, the sun’s arc is lower in the sky, so shadows from surrounding buildings or trees will be longer. Take this into account when planning out your location if you live in a climate where winter gardening is feasible. If the only space available gets sun in the summer but is in shadow in the winter, consider planting crops that do well in partial sunlight or shade during that time. Swiss chard, kale, strawberries, and many herbs will tolerate partial shade.
Another thing to consider when plotting out your planter beds or rows is their orientation. Again, full-sun exposure is the goal. If
