We are all a buzz about our third annual Adopt-A-Bee, where you get to adopt and name a native bee*! Make a bee’s summer experience unforgettable, as they hone their life skills in botanical identification, woodworking, vegetation maintenance, and end the summer with the ever so exciting Pollination Party. Join us in raising awareness of the importance of the little creatures and their contribution to our local and international food economy!

The Cactus Bee – $5 Likes – Getting down and dirty, subterranean living, prefers monogamy with prickly pear flowers, flying solo, early summer bungalow renovations, striking land development deals Dislikes – Roommate situations, cold weather, east coast living, birds or small mammals Open To – Experimentation with other cacti, communes, heavy-duty home excavations WHAT YOU GET Naming rights to a bee

A digital photo of your bee to share with friends and family

The Blue Mason Orchard Bee – $20 Likes – Communal living (especially in modern hi-rises), self-sufficiency, defined boundaries with males, a widow lifestyle, prefer “me” time, favorite season is spring, to be waited on like a real queen, hoarding dirt, turn-key living Dislikes – A male in the house, domestic chores such as making honey or beeswax, working with others, birds and small mammals Open To – All types of dirt collection, flirting with a variety of flora, new kinds of inter-species experiences WHAT YOU GET Naming rights to a bee

A digital photo of your bee to share with friends and family

A printed photo of your bee to share with friends and family

The Leaf Cutter Bee – $55 Likes – Foraging for their young, tubular crafting, cutting circles, a sick set of abs to carry pollen, working smart not hard, the widow lifestyle for females, when spring has sprung, move-in ready living, small broods Dislikes – Communal living, flies, ants and wasps, hands-on humans, stinging Open To – Any cavity to lay their eggs, all forms of flora, commercial pollination work WHAT YOU GET Naming rights to a bee

An original art project by your bee

A photo magnet of your bee

A digital photo of your bee to share with friends and family

A printed photo of your bee to share with friends and family

The Carpenter Bee – $100 Likes – Woodworking, the smell of sawdust, being large and in charge, keeping it mellow, agave dwelling, loving on desert and mountainous wildflowers, electrostatically-charged legs for pollen collection, sealing in eggs Flowers in the Attic style, a set it and forget it parenting technique, showing spring swagger (males) Dislikes – Woody the Woodpecker, roommates, hands-on humans, stinging (but don’t push their buttons) Open To – Human home destruction, dead wood, freelance commercial pollination work, communal living WHAT YOU GET Naming rights to a bee

An original art project by your bee

A photo magnet of your bee

A digital photo of your bee to share with friends and family

A printed photo of your bee to share with friends and family

A native bee nursery for your garden

National Pollinator Week

National Pollinator Week (June 17 – 23, 2019) highlights bats, birds, butterflies and bees for their contribution that ensures the survival of our terrestrial ecosystems. It is estimated that 90% of all flowering plants depend on animal pollinators to help them reproduce and that includes about 35% of the world’s food crops – consider that one bite in three at the dinner table depends on animal pollinators. Fruits and vegetables come immediately to mind, but foodstuffs from your cup of coffee in the morning to that glass of wine with an artisanal chocolate bar at the end of the day are also the direct result of animal pollination. In fact, in the United States, the pollination services provided by honey bees and other insects directly impact 150 different food crops and result in $20 billion worth of agricultural products each year.

A bonus to your bee adoption is an exclusive invite to our Pollinator Party on Friday, June 21. The party not only promotes National Pollinator Week, but honors the work of these little winged things. We want you to get to know your bees, so meet experts in the community of beekeeping, bee habitat building, and bee knowledge.

Pollinate, Celebrate

As part of your purchase you’ll receive an exclusive invite to the Pollinator Party from 6 to 8 p.m. on Friday, June 21! This is one party you’ll want to make a b-line to. What party would this be without locally-distilled spirit sampling? Not to mention, The Garden Bistro is hosting a molecular gastronomy bar with bee pollen and honeycomb. Let your palate explore the terroir in honey with the regional honey bar.

Party with us!

BeeStill BeeStill is created to inspire love for bees and pollinators and to donate half of profits to bee conservancies. Every sale is a donation. BeeStill is committed to Bee Girl and to the Xerces Society. Joan’s archival cards feature honey bees, digger bees, leaf cutter bees, flower flies and a green bottle fly on local flowers. Photos are taken in her front and back yards, neighborhood, nearby Sonoran Desert Wash and Tohono Chul. Join Joan as she provides mini presentations at her table about the relationships between bees and flowers, focusing on pollen and nectar and the interplay of flowering cycles/seasons, as well as having her BeeStill archival cards for sale. I print all the cards with archival ink on archival paper and place them with envelopes in presentation sleeves made of recycled materials. The back of each card identifies the bee and flower and notes that half of profits are donated to bee conservancies. I have seen that people do love bees and pollinators and that they are very happy to make a purchase that directly benefits bees, pollinators and our world through the work of these two conservancies. Visit her website at beestillcardsprints.com

Urban Poetry Pollinators Find all pollinator-specific poetry written throughout the gardens thanks to Urban Poetry Pollinators. UPP is cultivating & curating poetry in public spaces. community chalker. poet. aquarius . things ephemeral. See all their work on Instagram and their blog.

La Cerca Local band La Cerca performs from 6 to 8 p.m. Enjoying listening to songs from their recent release Night Bloom. La Cerca performs in collaboration with the Urban Poetry Pollinators for a live-chalking of poems featuring plants and the summer solstice. Learn more about La Cerca here.

Greg Corman Local Artist, Greg Corman, is displaying a collection of bee habitats to show you how you can make your yard more bee-friendly with sculptural, functional art. Visit all the other Corman bee habitats in our gardens.

Stephen Buchmann Meet Stephen Buchmann, a pollination ecologist specializing in bees, and an adjunct professor with the departments of Entomology and of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. Stephen is hosting an information table all about native bees. If you’ve got a bee question, he can answer it. Learn more about Stephen Buchmann and his publications on his website here.

See the Bees Meet Mona Chambers, founder of See the Bees, and see her beautiful custom built observation hive, which has live honey bees in it. She also has a beautiful display of honeybee pollinated crops & flowers as well as bees wax candles and other hive products. The mission of See the Bees is to raise awareness of honeybees and all they do – for each other, for us, and for the world around us. Seeing the bees and their profound spirit of connectivity can inspire our own sense of community and belonging with the natural world. More information on the See the Bees web page.

Giant Native Bee Have your photo taken on our new 5-foot anatomically-correct Cactus Bee! Brought to you by Tucson Electric Power. The bee was designed and engineered with sustainable materials by Joe Brown and Gabriel Scara

*We hope you can appreciate the humor and whimsy in the Adopt-A-Bee Campaign as we make no guarantees in actually being able to tell any bee apart long enough to name one (insert your bee name here). This silly campaign was created as a vehicle to inspire pollinator education and promote why the bee community it so important to our survival. We also hope you will understand that when brainstorming names for your bee you should skip anything rated over PG or containing profanity, and should keep that bee naming skill to yourself. Also, as these bees are wild and do not perform on command we make no guarantees that you can “meet your bee” or shake its tarsal claw. This is all in good fun, enjoy.