Before my husband and I began keeping honeybees in our backyard, I admired those people who managed to maintain carefully manicured front lawns, with each blade of grass cut to precision and nary a weed in sight.

That tidy, carpeted swath of green extending from the front door to the street has become the sign of a well-maintained home. Neat front lawns send the message that the people who live there care -- and care a lot -- about their home, their neighborhood, their community.

But our honeybees have taught me a lot about what it means to really care about a piece of land, and "manicured" is no longer at the top of my list. In fact, I'm beginning to think of tidy front lawns as the ultimate sign of sterility, a place where no pollinator would care to go. Why would they? A well-tended lawn offers little, if any, food for pollinators.

What's more, when lawns are devoid of what we have come to think of as "weeds," such as Dutch clover or the lowly dandelion, they generally get that way with the use of herbicides.

Pollinators are the mops of our environment. Whatever we pour into, spray on and sprinkle around our yards will eventually find its way into the pollen these valuable creatures collect, feed to their young and depend upon for survival.

No single cause has yet to be identified for Colony Collapse Disorder, which has been decimating honeybee populations since 2006. However, researchers have been surprised to find a stunning array of pesticides and herbicides in the pollen and beeswax of the collapsed colonies they have tested.

A sterile front lawn, then, is kind of a double whammy for pollinators: It requires chemicals to rid a swath of grass of the very plants that provide much-needed pollinator food.

In the suburbs, I rarely see people actually using or enjoying their front lawns. I never see children playing out in the front. The swing sets and picnic tables are all in the backyard. In fact, the only time I see people out in their front yards is when they're trudging behind or riding around on their mowers, burning more fossil fuels to keep that grass looking neat. The front lawn, it would seem, is a pretty barren space for people, too.

We'd be doing our pollinators and ourselves a big favor if we transformed our idea of what it means to have a well-tended yard in the front of our homes. Rather than a carefully mown swath of barren grass, a well-tended front yard should offer a colorful feast for human eyes and a literal feast for the bumble bees, mason bees, sweat bees and honey bees that visit it.

To learn more about pollinator plants and get some tips for turning your front yard into a pollinator garden, go to http://maarec.psu.edu/BeeGardens/PollinatorGardening.pdf.