About Us
Rocky Pond Nursery is a family-run flower farm, we specialize in growing wildflowers, that feed our bees. We sell Mason Bees, Leafcutter bees, bee accessories, wildflowers seeds, and lavender oil.
We are located on the western slopes of Oregon’s Cascade Range.
Mt. Hood is just to our north.
Mt. Jefferson is just south of us.
Our fields are bursting with flowers and teeming with Mason bees, Leafcutter bees, and honeybees.
We have spent ten years perfecting the management techniques to accelerate the production and use of Mason bees (Osmia lignaria, O. cornifrons, O. cornuta, and O. rufa) and Leafcutter Bees (Megachile rotundata).
Our flower fields when fully developed will have the capacity to feed a quarter million bees.
From our bee breeding program, we ship Mason Bees and Leafcutter Bees,
As breeding stock, across the nation.
Our Vision and Mission
Food Security- a world, free of hunger and malnutrition.
One-third of the food the world will need; must have Bees to pollinate it.
It cannot be done without bees.
Our mission is to provide research and develop sustainable management practices to cultivate a reserve pollinator, one that will support and backup and if necessary, replace the rapidly declining numbers of honeybees. We are dedicated to enhancing the use of native bees in orchards, gardens, and farms throughout the world.
If you think climate change is Serious.
The loss of bees is Catastrophic.
There were 300 billion honeybees in the US in the 1940s today their numbers have declined to 125 billion.
While—the world population is exploding.
We have third fewer honeybees to pollinate our crops while the number of mouths to feed has tripled.
US beekeepers lost 40% of honeybee colonies over the past year (2019). This is the worst winter on record for beekeepers, despite ten years of an intensive push to stop Colony Collapse Disorder and stem the losses.
The Great Balancing Act
The world must achieve a “great balancing act” in order to sustainably feed 9.6 billion people by 2050.
Below are a few graphics that will shine a light on the magnitude of the problem:
Now deduct 1/3 of all our food because we have no bees. Without bee sustaining our food production at current levels is impossible. Increase global food production by 70% by 2050 without bees— hopeless. The death of 3.1 children every year due to poor nutrition—think 100 million.
We must have Bees.
We must have a backup plan.
Consider a future, where bacon and beef are in limited supply, chicken and fish become as expensive as caviar, and there no fruits or vegetables and nine billion mouths to feed.
We believe that Mason Bees and Leafcutter Bees, which pollinate a hundred apples, for every apple pollinated by honeybees-can be that backup plan. One mason bee can do the work of a hundred honeybees.
Before 1940 Native bees like the Mason Bee and the Leafcutter Bee were the pollinators. After World War II with the help of insecticides, developed to kill mosquitoes in the South Pacific Island, we decimated native bees. Farmers were forced to turn to the honeybee. We are now working the honeybee— “To Death.”
Honeybees need help, Mason Bees and Leafcutter Bees stand ready-we just need a hell of a lot more of them.
I include, just for fun, this graphic we produced.
If we are to survive, we must, with your help; bring back the Mason Bee and Leafcutter Bee, from the brink of extinction till there enough of them to once again pollinate the world’s crops.