Jason and I watched a special on PBS late one night about bees and how there is a epidemic crisis with bees worldwide. It's very interesting and scarier to me than global warming. Watch it online here.
Albert Einstein said . . . "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."
So in connection with this documentary, we've had NO bees this summer, creating NO growth in zucchini and squash. People have reported losing half their bees this summer. So . . . I had to learn the art of mating flowers. The female flowers are attached to the end of the zucchini/squash, and the male flowers just grow off the plant. For the zucchini to continue to grow, the females need to be pollinated. The male and female each have different body parts in the middle of the flower. In order to pollinate them you have to take the male pistol and rub it all over the female stigma. Bees naturally take pollen from the males pistol and then fly to the female and pollinate that way, but with lack of bees, gardeners are seeing that they have to hand pollinate. It was a little weird at first making flowers mate, but now it's just fascinating! It's also a scary thought not having bees, and I'm sure we will be hearing a lot more about the loss of bees and honey in the near future.
Female
Male
6 comments:
Now that's something you don't get to do everyday. How did you spend your day before kindergarten?
Mating flowers, sounds a bit freaky.
hahaha Mating flowers. lovely! ha! I love your posts.
Mark is leaving for a couple of random trips this week/weekend. But they're both short. But yes! I would love to get together. :)
Lisa, that's just nasty. You stay out of that garden! Besides, you make me feel like a slacker. We planted peas and strawberries and lettuce, but not like yours. I just did it so the kids could see that they can actually make things grow out of the ground. So, we have a few leaves of lettuce, about 5 strawberries, and lots of peas. And the kids are happy. But I don't think I"m ready for sex ed in the garden yet.
We had some bees over at our house, making themselves a home in our light fixture. Jerry Cochran saved us by daringly stabbing the hive with a stick then running with flailing arms. Then Jodi and Mark would step on them. Sorry we killed all the bees in Alaska... :o\.
the whole zucchini sex thing is a little weird, but Hey, whatever "floats your boat" LOL!! And that is scary about the bee thing, and what's even scarier is that there is this guy that my husband works with who belongs to the RLDS church and he believes that the world is going to end March of 2012! That is in 4 YEARS! I'm thinking no way he knows when the world is going to end, but this bee thing is making me question my doubts about this guy. ( only a little)
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