Roadside Bee Habitat

Wildlife thrive in habitat or cover that includes food, water, places to reproduce, hide from predators, and plenty of space. Much of the habitat for bees and insect pollinators has been altered for use in industrial agriculture, urban and suburban lawns, and paved parking areas and roads. Dr. Marla Spivak of the University of Minnesota Bee Lab and Eric Mader of the Xerces Society spoke recently about pollinator reversing habitat loss. See http://www.minnpost.com/earth-journal/2014/12/keys-saving-our-endangered-bees-may-be-just-lying-along-roadside. They explained that loss of habitat is one of the three important drivers of Colony Collapse Disorder that continues to reduce managed honey bee colonies. The other two are the widespread use of neonicotinoid insecticides and increased virulence of some honey bee parasites, including the Varroa mite, and some fungal infections. Dr. Spivak explained that there has been much discussion involving banning the neonicotinoid insecticides to help the insects, however, she explained that they need “not just habitat but clean, uncontaminated habitat.” To maintain a robust agriculture she stated that “we need to try for a world with both pesticides and pollinators.” Industrial agriculture, involving vast acreage of cropland, offers little food for bees, poisons insects indiscriminately, and destroys their ground nests. Planting borders and untillable farm acreage in flowering, low-maintenance, native perennial plants were given as sources of food for bees and game birds. Planting milkweed can help monarch butterflies, and nitrogen-fixing clover cover crops improve soil fertility. Dr. Spivak’s University of Minnesota Bee Lab will be studying the effects of planting “bee lawns.”

 Dr. Spivak and Mr. Mader suggested that a solution to the loss of bee habitat could be conversion of mowed and sprayed areas along the nation’s highways into bee corridors. Corridors connect our pollinator gardens and pastures, making them much more effective habitats. Planted with native wildflowers, these right-of-ways could well serve our honey bees, native pollinators, birds, and small mammals. The future will see an interest in moving to roadside vegetation management plans to support our pollinators while beautifying our roadways.

--Richard

Vanishing Monarchs

Animals that consume a narrow diet are much more vulnerable than those eat a varied diet. While the honey bee derives its nutrition from many flower sources, the larvae of another insect, the monarch butterfly, relies solely upon one, the milkweed plant. Recent years have seen dramatic declines in the number of monarch butterflies. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes in the Chicago Tribune, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-monarch-butterfly-herbicide-kennedy-perspec-102-20141021-story.html, that this past summer he saw no monarch butterflies in an area where he saw hundreds per day in previous years. Kennedy explains that scientists blame the loss of monarch butterflies in part on deforestation in Mexico, drought, climate change. However, the greatest cause of this migrating butterfly’s disappearance is the widespread use of the herbicide glyphosate, first marketed by Monsanto as Roundup. When Monsanto introduced “Roundup Ready” corn and soybeans in the late 1990s, farmers started spraying agricultural fields with the herbicide to kill everything except the desired crop. As a result of this change in farming practice, milkweed has been largely eliminated from much of America’s crop lands. To combat the loss of the monarch’s food, Kennedy suggests that we plant milkweed to create a “butterfly highway” along the monarch’s migratory route from the U.S. and Canada to Mexico. These plantings fit in nicely with efforts to help save bees, butterflies, and other at-risk pollinators.

The monarch’s treacherous migration of 2500 miles involves several generations. Butterflies east of the Rockies fly to Mexico to spend the winter, and monarchs west of the Rockies winter in California. The Arkansas Democrat Gazette illustrates their migration route through Arkansas at http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2014/oct/25/milkweed-and-monarchs-20141025/. Those wanting to provide milkweed for the passing butterflies can find sources of seed from the Xerces Society at http://www.xerces.org/milkweed-seed-finder/.  The monarch, considered by some as the most beautiful insect may respond to plantings of its required food in pollinator gardens. With flowers added, these gardens are important food plots for honey bees and native pollinators as well.

--Richard

Pollinator Corridors

A recent front page story in Memphis’ The Commercial Appeal, “To save a buck, state lets grass grow along I-40 in West Tennessee,” described the overgrown interstate highway roadsides resulting from reduced mowing. The following is an excerpt from a letter that I wrote the editor in response:

“While that is quite understandable in tough budget times, perhaps it is time to explore an alternative highway right-of-way management strategy. The interstate highway right-of-way is currently managed as a grassland of perennial grasses. Roadsides and medians are basically lawns of tall fescue with spring-blooming crimson and white clover. Some designated areas are left un-mowed as wildflower plots or pollinator pastures. An alternative strategy could involve expanding the wildflower plots into pollinator corridors along highway rights-of-way.”

“Some electrical power and petroleum pipeline rights-of-way are being maintained according to designed integrated plant management plans. Here, appropriate native grasses and wildflowers are allowed to grow in unmowed prairie habitats. Native wildflower species are chosen to provide continuous blooming throughout the growing seasons, and native shrubs are allowed to line the margins of rights-of-way.

“The resulting prairie affords vehicle entry into the rights-of-way while providing important habitat and forage for honey bees and native pollinators, songbirds, and small mammals. The honey bees and native pollinators, important for the production of one-third of our human diet, are declining in numbers across North America.

“These prairie corridors along highway rights-of-way may provide a lower-maintenance alternative to mowing, provide important habitat and forage for pollinators, and present colorful, attractive foliage along our highways.”

The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation has prepared an overview of the conservation potential of roadside habitat. It may be viewed at http://www.xerces.org/pollinator-conservation-roadsides/. Just at bison and large mammals benefit from established wildlife corridors in the American West, honey bees and butterflies can benefit from pollinator corridors along our interstate highways. Today’s photo shows a honey bee foraging vetch among asters and buttercups.

--Richard

Clover in Bloom

In today’s photo we see a bumblebee foraging for nectar on white clover. White clover probably can be considered the most important honey plant. When the temperatures range between 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit, clover is a prolific nectar producer. Though the blossoms have been observed for quite a while, clover requires warm days to secrete large amounts of nectar. Clover is a member of the important family of bee plants, the legumes. Like a number of legumes, clover serves an important role in fixing nitrogen into a usable state in the soil. Even though the atmosphere is largely comprised of nitrogen, it is not available for plants to use. Bacteria growing on the roots of the clover plants are the active agent for converting the nitrogen. The result is increased soil fertility. Along with the clovers, the legume, or pea, family includes a number of important bee plants: peas, beans, peanuts, alfalfa, soybeans, lespedeza, vetch, kudzu, redbud, mimosa, locust, and Kentucky coffeetrees. Many of these plants provide food for wildlife and animal forage. Clover, alfalfa, and lespedeza are used as pasture crops for cattle; while soybeans are processed into feed for livestock and poultry.

Beekeepers plant clover around bee yards and in spare patches of land. The plant has a hearty root system and is easily propagated by seed. The seed is produced when honey bees forage the flowers. I often find the foot prints of deer in stands of clover around bee yards. As well as being an important forage plant for honey bees, it provides high-quality food for wildlife. Clover honey is light in color and mild in flavor, making it one of the favorites with the public. Bumblebees, like the one shown, are dwindling in many areas due to the loss of habitat. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation is attempting to make people aware of the potential for pollinator habitat restoral along the nation’s roadsides. You can read more at: http://www.xerces.org/pollinator-conservation-roadsides/.

--Richard

Natural Habitats

While making a mid-winter walk-through of one of my bee yards, I stopped to check on some blue orchard bee nesting holes that I had drilled in a dead tree. Some of the holes were sealed off indicating that these native pollinators had used them as nesting areas to raise another generation of bees. High in the tree a downy woodpecker was actively pitching chips of wood out of a small entrance hole as it enlarged a cavity in the dead tree. Downy woodpeckers roost in cavities; and with temperatures well below freezing for a number of days, cavities are important wildlife habitats. While visiting our nature trails, our friend Cissy Stone explained that if dead trees are not endangering people or property they serve nature well if left standing. They also continue to serve even after they eventually fall and decay. This standing tree trunk is now providing habitat for the reproduction of important native pollinators and song birds. Woodpeckers and chickadees create cavities in dead trees, and termites help open the cavities ever further. Swarming honey bees will likely move into the cavities. Squirrels have much greater success raising their young in tree cavities than in exposed nests constructed of leaves and twigs. Once the dead tree finally falls, it will support a number of insects, salamanders, lizards, snakes, and small burrowing mammals until it finally turns into cellulose mulch. Squirrels will plant the seeds of new trees in the enriched soil. Nature gets a lot of use from a dead tree.

Two groups actively fighting to protect honey bees and pollinators, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Xerces Society, have been successful in having a pesticide potentially dangerous to honey bees removed from store shelves. The product carrying the trade names Movento and Ultor had been approved for use by the EPA without considering the consequences of its use on bees. The NRDC can be followed at http://www.beesafe.org/. The Xerces Society can be followed at http://www.xerces.org/.
--Richard

Preparing Pollinator Habitat

It is important to preserve both honey bees and native pollinators for us to continue to have abundant food, productive agriculture, healthy wildlife, and a diversity of plants and animals in the environment. While the honey bee performs the largest share of the pollination of commercial crops, the native pollinators also contribute by supplementing and filling in on the pollination requirements of flowers and crops. All of the vital pollinators need food and habitat to flourish. Urbanization that removes natural vegetation, the use of monoculture farming practices, and the widespread use of herbicides have removed much of the food supplies and habitat of the pollinators. The excessive use of insecticides and pesticides have reduced the numbers of insect pollinators and weakened many of the surviving insects.

We can help to provide for the pollinators by being aware that they need food, water, habitat, and places to breed and develop their offspring. Many of the pollinators have specific food and protected habitat requirements for their developing offspring. We can rapidly increase the pollinators in our lawns, gardens, orchards, and farms by leaving margins of “weedy,” un-mowed ground, water sources, plants, like milkweed, for larvae to feed upon, and nesting places. Blue orchard bees, or mason bees, are one of the easily attracted and highly effective native pollinators in North America. In the winter, when our honey bee activity is at a minimum, we prepare nesting areas for blue orchard bees, bumble bees, and other solitary bees. Blue orchard bees lay their eggs in holes in wood drilled by beetles or in the hollow stems of plants with pithy centers. Nesting tubes may be fashioned from bamboo canes or by drilling holes in untreated wood or dead trees. In the picture, Rita is drilling 5/16 inch holes in the trunk of a cottonwood tree that was struck by lightning. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation has a new fact sheet for building and maintaining nest sites for tunnel nesting bees at http://www.xerces.org/.
--Richard

Morning Glory in Bloom

Morning glory, also called hedge bindweed, is in bloom on vines covering fences and idle farm equipment. The prolific vines cover any object in a sunny area. I found a morning glory vine climbing the rope of our old farm bell, which evidently had not been pulled in a while. The flowers are white funnels with tints of lavender. Visiting morning glory shortly after sunrise finds the blossoms being visited by numerous native pollinators. Honey bees prefer to visit flowers with a more open blossom. Click on today’s picture to see a blue orchard bee approaching a morning glory flower. Blue orchard bees, also called mason bees, are shiny, blue-black in color. They are often mistaken for bottle flies. These gentle and fast flying native bees hit a flower hard, and then scrub their bodies around the inside the flower before zooming off. In the process of scrubbing around inside the flowers, the blue orchard bees cover their bodies with pollen which they carry along to the next flower, very effectively pollinating the plant. While honey bees and bumble bees carry their pollen in pollen baskets on their hind legs, blue orchard bees carry their pollen on hairs on the underside of their abdomen.

The honey bee is the most widely employed pollinator, but our agriculture, food supply, and even our wildlife are healthier if we have a diversity of pollinators available. Having an assortment of native pollinators available within flying range of agricultural crops makes them more productive. To have a diversity of pollinators we need a diversity of flowering plants and habitats. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation is dedicated to protecting pollinators The Xerces Society offers plans for managing habitat for native pollinators at their web site, http://www.xerces.org/. It is easy for us to provide flowering plants and nesting places for the blue orchard bees. They are useful and enjoyable to have in the garden.
--Richard