Backyard vegetable gardening is an easy, fun, cost-effective, environmentally-friendly way to feed
                   your family with superior nutrition, taste and lack of chemicals. You would be amazed at how much food you can grow in a very small space. Even if you have just a balcony or sunny window you can grow many things. (There are many websites that will teach you square foot gardening, urban gardening and gardening in containers).

In order to be a successful backyard vegetable gardener, you need to ensure you have bees or other insects to pollinate your plants, especially those that have both male and female flowers. Without enough pollinators, you will get plenty of flowers, but little or no fruit.

There are many ways to attract bees to your garden with landscaping since there are many plants that bees are attracted to, but why wait to attract bees with landscaping since they have to mature and flower to do their job? You can also put out bee nesting boxes, but I haven’t heard one person say they got any bees that way unless you also bought the larvae.

You want vegetables and flowers to pollinate NOW! That’s why we created a way to attract bees to your garden within minutes.

Our recipe came about when we had a considerable investment in an urban garden and realized in July that there were no bees in our yard. Where did all the bees go? There was no time, or space, to add landscaping to attract the bees so we experimented with some natural food-based products to invite them to our garden.

You will start seeing bees in your garden within minutes or hours of spraying on your plants, depending on far away you live from local bee colonies. You can also put a small amount in a shallow tray with some sticks in it to keep them from drowning when they drink it. Annabees is made with 100% human food-based organic ingredients and is completely safe to eat by humans. It has a pleasant taste and smell that won’t offend you or your neighbors and will not harm your plants, pets or other critters and insects living in your garden.

Read on if you have wondered…….

• Why are there no bees in my yard?
• Why are the bees not in my vegetable garden or fruit trees?
• Why wait to attract bees with landscaping and nest boxes?
• Why are my zucchini, squash, melons and pumpkins not producing?
• Why are the tiny fruits falling off?
• Why are my fruit trees not producing?
• What does garden sex mean?
• What are male and female flowers?
• What is CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) in bees?
• What is a Femivore?

……..then Annabees can help your garden produce the most tasty and nutritious fruits and vegetables by letting nature take its course!

Interesting facts about vegetable gardening and bees:

Garden Sex:
In plants that have both male/female flowers (i.e. squash, gourds, melons, zucchini, cucumbers, fruit trees, the male flowers come first. Having no ovaries, they can’t produce fruit. After being open only a few hours the petals droop and the flower wilts. That explains the early summer complaints about many flowers but no vegetables or fruit.

A few weeks after the male squash flowers begin appearing, female flowers start opening. How do you tell the difference? Female flowers have a tiny squash (or cucumber or gourd or melon) directly under the yellow flower. Male flowers have nothing on the stem under the bloom.

A pollen-carrying insect must visit a female squash flower at least three times in the few hours its open in order to accomplish full pollination. If a bee visits the flower but once, partial pollination occurs. The resulting squash slightly swells but may soon abort and drop from the stem. That explains the badly-formed fruit that squash gardeners find.

What is CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) in bees?
Beginning in October 2006, some beekeepers began reporting losses of 30-90 percent of their hives. While colony losses are not unexpected during winter weather, the magnitude of loss suffered by some beekeepers was highly unusual.  This phenomenon, which currently does not have a recognizable underlying cause, has been termed "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD). The main symptom of CCD is simply no or a low number of adult honey bees present but with a live queen and no dead honey bees in the hive. Often there is still honey in the hive, and immature bees (brood) are present.

ARS scientists and others are in the process of carrying out research to discover the cause(s) of CCD and develop ways for beekeepers to respond to the problem.

What is a “Femivore?”
New York (NY) Times
The Femivore’s Dilemma
By PEGGY ORENSTEIN
Published: March 11, 2010
(...)
Femivorism is grounded in the very principles of self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal fulfillment that drove women into the work force in the first place. Given how conscious (not to say obsessive) everyone has become about the source of their food — who these days can’t wax poetic about compost? — it also confers instant legitimacy. Rather than embodying the limits of one movement, femivores expand those of another: feeding their families clean, flavorful food; reducing their carbon footprints; producing sustainably instead of consuming rampantly. What could be more vital, more gratifying, and more morally defensible?

There is even an economic argument for choosing a literal nest egg over a figurative one. Conventional feminist wisdom held that two incomes were necessary to provide a family’s basic needs — not to mention to guard against job loss, catastrophic illness, divorce or the death of a spouse. Femivores suggest that knowing how to feed and clothe yourself regardless of circumstance, to turn paucity into plenty, is an equal — possibly greater — safety net. After all, who is better equipped to weather this economy, the high-earning woman who loses her job or the frugal homemaker who can count her chickens?

About Me
I am a backyard vegetable gardener in Boise, ID and this is the first year I have not had one bee in my yard. Since I had a pretty good investment in this venture by July, I had to figure out a way to get my zucchini and squash plants pollinated - and fast - or I would not be getting much fruit. I played around with some different natural substances to attract the bees and stumbled upon a combination that brought bees to my garden in minutes, literally! I sprayed just a little bit on the male and female flowers of the plants I wanted them to pollinate and they started showing up a few at a time in minutes. The next day, there were hoards of them! I was astonished at how well this works and am in the process of getting a patent.

I am also enjoying the benefits of being an urban chicken farmer thanks to what I learned on backyardchickens.com. Between the eggs and veggies (thanks to Annabees) I will enjoy a bumper crop of delicious food for years to come with a lot fewer visits to the grocery store!

I would love to answer any questions you may or talk about backyard gardening so feel free to contact me by email.

Thanks for visiting Annabees! -- Anna