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Mona Urbina (Conservation and Resource Studies major)
“Gardening for Native Bees in the San Francisco Bay Area and Beyond"
Sponsor: Professor Gordon Frankie, Environmental Science, Policy, and Management
Project Description
Mona's proficiency as an environmental horticulturist and her interest in urban ecosystems led her to the Frankie lab, where she has been preparing pilot bee-gardens. Over time, urban sprawl has fragmented habitats necessary for the survival of California native bees and their natural host plants. Mona aims to document the most bee-attracting native plants to promote urban gardens that will provide new habitats and resources for native bees. She will survey bee-flower relationships at Mount Wanda at the John Muir National Monument (where exotic grasses are crowding out pollinator dependent plant species), and in ornamental native-plant urban bee-gardens, planted in the adjacent city of Martinez, CA, using standardized bee monitoring techniques. The product of her independent study research will be shared in workshops for the public, including agriculturalists, urban gardeners, and schools, for constructing effective and attractive native bee gardens.
Scholar's Photo
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Mona takes a picture of little bees hovering over the attractive pink flowers.
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Scholar's Journal
In the beginning of the summer, I made my first trip out to Mount Wanda, in the John Muir National Park. It was almost entirely overgrown with exotic grasses. My beautiful and knowledgeable field assistant Tasha Lanni and I were given a tour by my mentor, Dr. Gordon Frankie. As we hiked up the mountain in the warm (sometimes HOT) sunny weather of Martinez, we could see that wild oats dominated the terrain. It did not look very good for bees at all! However, I did see a couple of hives in the area. We finally met the head of the trail where Tasha and I would return to traverse biweekly for the rest of the warm summer.
Halfway down the trail was a break to the east, which led the way to the chaparral area I had come to survey for bees. The trail was extremely overgrown and nearly impossible to see. We mainly followed it through by feel of the compacted earth under our feet. When we finally arrived to the chaparral area, which took up a very small proportion of land in the park, I was excited to see hundreds of buzzing bees, enthralled in their foraging activity on full blooming chamise. Some were on Mimulus and freshly blooming Lotus shrubs. Upon inspection, the majority of the bees were honey bees. Although I appreciate these exotic pollinators, my main goal was to survey native bees. Fortunately, I was able to find quite a diversity of bees foraging in this chaparral area, but it was such a small area. Where else on the mountain did the bees have to forage? What other resources where there, if any? How long would the resources last?
To answer some of these questions, I needed to explore more of the terrain on the mountain. Funny enough, the first tour that Frankie gave us ended at the chaparral area, where he had left us to our own devices. Thus, it was up to us to find the rest of the loop trail he had tipped us off on to explore. The silly part of this was that both Tasha and I share very loopy senses of direction. We got quite lost but managed to find our way back a few deer trails later. On our adventure, I took note of the scarcity of resources for bees in the areas that we passed. Frankie had confirmed on a following trip that the Park had grown much worse with invasive exotic species since his visits two years past. By this time, I was very curious to see what was going on in the urban gardens down below the mountain and if the bee diversity and activity looked as good as in the garden we had planted in the UCB Oxford Tract.
The urban garden I surveyed in Martinez lived up to its expectations beautifully. Bees of all kinds were visiting and in good numbers. By mid summer, the bee activity on Mt. Wanda had especially slowed down since there was no longer much for bees to forage from. The chaparral area became so limited, and later the rangers mowed down all the edges of the trails where Milk Weed would have been. However, towards the end of the summer, I was excited to see that Madia, a native tar weed, was beginning to bloom on the slopes of the mountain, forming glorious yellow patches of delicate daisy-like flowers atop tall sticky stems that smell like jelly bellies. However, Madia blooms daily only from early morning until 11:00 a.m. After closing time, there is very little activity. The urban setting in Martinez, on the other hand, seemed to maintain all-day-action.
For other comparisons, I ventured out to other urban areas besides Martinez (such as Sacramento and Marin) to see what the bee activity was like. These places were also booming with bees. Sometimes, bees were foraging from plants that they do not normally forage from in Berkeley or Martinez, which was a peculiarity.
Overall, I’ve learned of an excellent selection of plants that, if planted in a well choreographed blooming sequence, will entice a good diversity of bees to stick around. Even the hardy little tar weeds that provide a morning snack for bees, while growing in the seemingly bone dry soil of Mount Wanda, are testimony to that.
Check out the urban bee gardens web site!
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