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>> Hi, my name is Laurence Packer. I'm a Professor of Biology
at York University and I study bees.
There are almost 20,000 described species of bees;
900 of them are found in Canada.
Without them, the world would look a completely different
place and it would be rather difficult for us to get most
of our fruit and vegetables,
and coffee would be ever so expensive.
Perhaps as much as 30 per cent of the food
that we eat depends upon pollination by some organism
or other and most of that pollination is done by bees.
For example, here we've got tomitios
which requires pollination and then here we can see okra.
Here's the beautiful okra flower and here's a tasty okra.
Ladies' fingers is another name for it.
Back over there, there's blueberries, and raspberries
to my left, and there's also strawberries
that all finished now.
As has been pointed out in the media a lot lately,
bees are in trouble and it's not just honey bees that are
in trouble, in fact I've not seen a single honey bee
in my garden this year, but some of the other species
of bees are also in trouble. What was one
of the most common bumble bees
in southern Ontario 20 years ago is now all but extinct
in the entire country of Canada. It's now only found
at the Pinery Provincial Park.
There are other bumble bees whose populations have decreased
dramatically and so it's important for people to be able
to increase the diversity and attractiveness
of their gardens for bees.
So you can make your backyard more friendly for bees.
By doing this, you increase the pollination of the fruits
and vegetables in your own back yard
which produces nice nutritional, healthful food for you
and also for you neighbors.
A healthy garden that's healthy
for bees is healthy for people too.
So there are at least two different species
of bees nesting in my old raspberry canes
and they both make these nice little round holes
and they build their nest inside the pith,
inside the dead raspberry cane.
So if you're really keen, you can build condos for bees
like this one here. What we can see here is
in these holes, there's one, two, three different nests
and they've actually been made probably by different species.
And this one I saw finishing its nest just yesterday,
and you can see that they've plugged their entrances
with mud or leaves.
Even if you live in a high rise you can attract bees
to pollinate fruits and vegetables that you grow in pots
on the balcony. Bees have been found at least
up to the 26th floor of high rises in New York
and I'm sure they are just as active
at high altitude here in Toronto.
So this is a yellow jacket
and many people mistake these for bees.
Yellow jackets are wasps
and they eat meat whereas bees are vegetarians
and they eat pollen and nectar.
It's the yellow jackets that are disturbing you
in your barbecues late in summer because they're looking
for some meat to take home to the nest.
Often because people confuse the two,
bees have got a bit of a bad reputation.
Bees will only sting you if you catch them or if you sit on them
or if one lands on your hair and you brush your hair.
Bees will only sting in self defense.
If you're interested in finding out more about the bees
of the world and the interesting things they get
up to, then please read my book.
The proceeds from sales
of my book go towards bee conservation research.
You can also look at the links provided here
which will give you all sorts of different kinds of information
about bees and how you can help them.