We call them bugs, their actual names are insects, arachnids, and myriapods… but we could also call them “the forgotten ones”, as they pass so easily unseen in front of our eyes most of the time. Many of us have learned to automatically classify these as annoyances, when encountering them, or almost as invisible; still, they have so much inner magic! Let’s explore it a bit together.
Note: all the pictures present in this article have been taken in the Aurora climate garden! Some by Réka Pálinkási and others are currently present in our iNaturalist location, which shows the garden’s rich biodiversity. You can check it at Biodiversity restoration – Auróra.
Honey bees and wild bees
While all bees are incredibly precious and essential for our ecosystem, when we think of them we often picture just the honey ones in our mind: the more social ones, which work together in their fascinating big hives, which have a queen and, after using their barbed sting to defends themselves, die. They are not the only kind of bees that exist, still! The wild ones are their more solitary counterpart, and currently the most endangered.
Different in shapes, sizes and colours, because of the natural places that they usually nest in (dead wood, bare soil, hollow plants stems, to name a few), they are at a higher risk of habitat loss: with the construction of buildings and roads that replace the natural environment, these tiny friends of ours become homeless.
Also, human intervention interferes with their survival in more than another way, as for example with garden maintenance, that with the frequent removal of weeds and dead plants makes even parks or gardens deprived of nesting spots for them.
Wild bees have a crucial role in biodiversity, they help to make agriculture more resilient and many plants for pollination rely specifically on them, not just honey bees.
So, how can we help them?
- we can create bee hotels;
- we can leave them water on dishes with some stones, so that they can land on these while drinking;
- we can reduce the use of pesticides or, even better, avoid it!
This last mention introduces us to the little buddies that we are going to talk about next: pests and their predators.
All kind of pests that we can find in our gardens, like aphids (leaf lice), have their natural predators: if we wait for them to arrive, instead of trying to get rid of their presence with pesticides and any kind of chemicals, then they will protect our gardens all the season: ladybugs, hoverflies, lacewings, can all be our friendly allies and their presence is the sign of a healthy balanced ecosystem.
In nature everything has it’s own solution; we live in a system able to fix itself over and over, if we allow all the parts in play to do their part, by sometimes being humble enough to just sit and watch without interfering with it.
Next time a little bug will enter your home, please, be kind. They may be very small, less complex creature than we are… still, does this really mean that they don’t deserve our respect and care? That their life holds no value? They certainly are very helpful and even necessary to us in many ways but, even if they were not, is the fact that they are alive and part of our world not of a valid reason enough to be glad for their company? Even if some of them may scare us, as they look so different and almost alien to us, they definitely are not: to learn to see them as our friendly companions is the beginning of a bright future, that can lead us to wonderful places, made of prosperity and understanding.
