I think it would probably be more effective to just provide seeds for native flowering plants to them directly, as well as sowing county/city/state parks and interstate/highway greens with some.
I've had the idea for years of playing Johnny Appleseed by being "Ryan Flowerseed" and driving around throwing hand fulls of seeds from native flowering species off the shoulder/into the medians of interstates and highways but it would actually be quite expensive to do it even over relatively short distances and I'd probably get a ticket for littering facepalm.
So a couple of complicating factors with that. Typically maintainers of 'right-of-way' spaces (transportation corridors), are pretty heavy users of herbicide and manage in a manner which is fairly antagonistic towards plant/ animal life.
Likewise, whenever you are running a program to do some kind of home-owner outreach/ change in behavior, its pretty important to have some training, professional educators, validation components to the work. Otherwise the program will get accused of just handing out freebies with no return on investment. As well, you'll want to quantify the residual impact of the program. Typically the goals of these programs is to try and create an overall shift in how people manage their spaces and a 'keeping-up-with-the-joneses' effect. For that to work however, the impact needs to be visually appealing.
>So a couple of complicating factors with that. Typically maintainers of 'right-of-way' spaces (transportation corridors), are pretty heavy users of herbicide and manage in a manner which is fairly antagonistic towards plant/ animal life.
Here in Indiana many have signs that say something along the lines of "wildflowers, do not cut" so I would presume this means do not spray either.
Depending on where you are those spaces along highways are often available for farmers to use for heying... so while it flowers can can grow there, it's not a sure thing that they'll be there consistently depending on use.
This is kind of a thing, at least at the county level. The county I live in has an annual sapling/seed sale where bunches of Minnesota-appropriate saplings are sold at low cost (average $25 for 2 dozen tree saplings) along with packets of various types of prairie grass and wildflower mixes. My main problem is laziness, so a lot of my plants end up dying before I get them in the ground, or I forget to take care of them after I do. I've planted a bunch of seedlings from the program over the last 10 years and a couple are already over 12' tall. I planted about a half-dozen swamp oaks last year and most of them are doing fine so far.
Part of the problem (as always!) is people. There is the Roadsides for Wildlife program, meaning that the county will not spray herbicide in areas with the sign in order to promote wildlife habitat. But a lot of people will take the signs down. I guess because "dandelions ugly."
Since my "lawn" is already mostly clover and other wild plants anyway, I'm definitely going to look into this program.
Just to shill for bee friendly lawns: I have a creeping thyme lawn that I would recommend entirely. It attracts tons of bees, butterflies, doesn’t need mowing but once a year (to clean up the spent flowers which are lovely in the summer), is drought tolerant (I water once every 2 weeks), and is evergreen to boot!
Not really a fan. I have seen a few great examples, but most people just seem to think that it means they can stop mowing their lawn and let the property look abandoned.
Would you mind posting a picture? My lawn is this delightful combination of grasses and local weeds that is simultaneously uncomfortable to walk on, and also tremendously unaesthetic no matter what I seem to do. Wouldn't mind power-raking it up and putting down something better one of these years, but don't want to just do something conventional if there's a truly better option.
We've banned this account for posting unsubstantive comments and ignoring our request to stop. Continuing like this will get your main account banned as well, so please don't.
I didn’t have to amend the soil. Thyme actually does well in poor soil conditions! As for planting you’ll have to buy plugs if you want consistency. These varieties if grown from seed won’t necessarily be true to form.
It's a little surprising that the article itself calls out creeping thyme as one of the bee-friendly candidate plants for MN, then, as does the article it ultimately sources from:
Creeping thyme works fine in the Twin Cities metro, at least. It grows very well in our yard, and it's all over our neighborhood.
We also have a big bunch of yarrow planted in our hellstrip. It grows great in those tough conditions. We don't even water it, and it's always full of bees and other bugs.
No, these were all planted as plugs. Each variety of thyme must be propagated via cutting as the traits of that variety are not guaranteed if grown from seed.
This sounds great! What sort of climate are you in? And may I ask if you (or anyone else here who has done this) has kids? I would love to replace or supplement my lawn with clover or thyme, but I’m a little concerned that I’d be asking for my kids’ feet to get stung.
I'm in Albuquerque (zone 7). I'm not sure this is a great kid lawn because while it will hold up to foot traffic, it might get kind of torn up if kids are running around on it a lot.
I recently added a load of "bee-friendly" high nectar plants to my garden. Until recently we thought it had been unsuccessful, and wrote it off as a failed experiment. Fast forward a couple of weeks and we suddenly couldn't walk a few meters without spotting at least 7 or 8 bees of various different species (both hive and solitary) buzzing around the place. It's been wonderful, and I've recommended all my friends who are into gardening to try it out. We've also had some new insects and bird species move in, along with a family of hedgehogs!
If anyone else would like to outfit their garden with some more bee friendly plants, we've had great luck with the following:-
-Himalayan balsam
-Yellow water iris
-Gladioli
-Common comfrey (Makes great fertilizer, and attracts some unique species)
-Blackberry
-Hedge bindweed
-Honeysuckle (Smells amazing!)
-Sweet pea
-Foxglove
-Rhododendron
-Lavender
-Bluebells (Good food source for early spring)
-Clovers (Bees really have really taken a liking to these)
-Greater knapweed (Super hardy)
-Hellebore (Late flowerer, so great to keep them running over winter!)
-Viper's bugloss
-Wood anemone
Most of these are common meadow plants that take little to no effort other than seeding them. Throw them down, cover with grass trimmings, mulch or compost and you're ready to go. This particular list is ideal for a mild, wet climate like the UK. Feel free to modify it depending on your wants and needs!
My wife and I have been working on growing a lot of native plants (we're in MN) and one of the most amazing things is in the fall we'll have anywhere from 50-100 bees in our plants surrounding our patio. OUR PATIO! The best part about it is that we can sit out there, have a beer, and the bees don't care about us at all. I love to watch the bees, and show the bees to my kids.
you are not allergic. borage belongs to the cucumber family and the stems and leaves have these tiny prickles. just wear long gloves. they reseed like crazy..they are edible flowers and bees love them.
further, the leaves can be cooked as pasta filling. mild taste of cucumber. once you have one borage plant, you will never get rid of them. i have both the blue and white variety.
However, the vines themselves are a thorny menace, with a coating of sharp, strong spines that hook backwards towards the root. Catch one of these sometimes slender tendrils around an ankle while walking, and you might think you can just pull through it... and rapidly learn that you shouldn't.
If you can't convince someone to pick them for you, go armoured. I have some old fire turn-out pants that help quite a bit.
Plant seeds tend to travel far and wide with birds and animal migratory patterns. What takes root is dependent on soil, climate, etc. Meaning, what’s native is less dependent on location and more on conditions.
As climate changes, conditions change, and so the set of plants best suited to any particular location changes as well.
Plant ranges are migrating due to climate change. For species that are native to areas close enough to be introduced naturally invasive is not a useful definition.
Some native plants can handle that kind of temperature change better than others. I wish there were a database of plants that are both native and climate resilient for different areas.
I've planted the Lonicera periclymenum species, which is very much native to the UK. I'm also looking to plant the other type, Lonicera xylosteum, in the coming months. If you're in the US though I believe it could well be an invasive species from Europe.
Yes, I'm in the US - Minnesota in fact. Our worst bush/tree invader is Buckthorn, but Honeysuckle is right behind it. I believe both were introduced as garden plants.
I believe they're native to the UK, but not the US. The plant was also rated in second place for per day nectar production per flower in a UK plants survey conducted by the AgriLand project which is supported by the UK Insect Pollinators Initiative.
They also look wonderful, so they're very much here to stay.
Having just now read about Rhododendron destroying habitats all around the UK, I'm inclined to tear it out. I'll play it by ear and just keep an eye on it for the moment. If it starts growing unruly I'll be sure to take my shears to it. If only it wasn't so pretty, and so bee-friendly!
One or two on the list are non-native, simply because their nectar production was so good. Admittedly I've been relatively blasé when it comes to native vs non-native. My only requirements were that bees like it and it can grow in the hard, clay-like soil in my garden. I've had no issues with the native plants getting blocked out by the non-native, but I will keep an eye on it and remove any foreign guests that seem to be taking my hospitality too generously.
Not all plants work everywhere or should, some on that list are invasive to areas. Your local university or city probably has resources for what native plants would work best for your environment and bees.
Agreed. I would edit my comment but it's a little late now. Most of this list is for the UK, bar a few non-native that I added for looks/nectar production. If you're in the US or elsewhere, make sure to find what is native for you.
I have a lavender bush next to my front door. There are always a bunch of bees on it... makes leaving the house in the morning a little more enjoyable.
Native is really ideal. Native plants will have the right water & soil needs, aren't invasive, and are known to pollinators. You can see this in action in our yard- even without supplemental water in a semi-arid climate, the penstemons go gangbusters and are covered in bees.
Penstemons are notoriously difficult to grow in a garden. I had a couple (native to coastal California) and they were disease and pest (aphid) magnets. Absolutely stunning flowers though.
Well, I guess that just illustrates my point- here, they grow like weeds, and if you pay attention they are everywhere. Which makes them a good choice- here.
You can see something similar in our columbine patch, the native blue varieties have reseeded with great success, & the founders are huge and vivacious. But the non-native varieties are pale, small, droopy, stressed, and have not propagated.
P.S. if you're saying you live in coastal CA & tried to grow the local penstemon, did you plant them in the right conditions? They are a xeric plant family, the less you water them the happier they seem...
Yeah the penstemon (Panoche and Blue Springs[1]) were planted together with some woolly sunflower and a native lupine. I also have some epilobium and monkey flower going. None require much water.
Of that one group, the sunflower was the only one that survived. The penstemon were just the biggest magnets for aphids, fungus, and spider mites. One of them bolted, but both had some amazing flowers that the bees loved. In the end I think the soil was just nutrient deficient.
The sunflower has mostly taken over (but is loathe to actually flower), and I've planted a magentaish monkey flower and another lupine. This time around the lupine looks much better. The epilobium and the orange monkey flower continue to thrive.
I'd love to plant another penstemon, but I think next up might be a yellow lupine.
You need some small flat flowers to get more predator species in there (including lady bugs, lacewings, and some parasitic wasps). Yarrow is the easiest for most of us to get.
We had plenty of these species in our garden before. The lady bugs are an absolute menace and get everywhere! This list was just for particularly bee friendly species.
We did something similar at the end of the garden with emphasis on native wild species and minimal maintenance - aiming for more wild than garden. The low maintenance didn't quite work as planned. Nature helped and now we've gained brambles (probably the highest maintenance part, as if left alone we'd have no garden, and once in they're damned hard to get rid of), thistle, inevitable dandelions and a few unidentified things have moved in too. The blackberry, nettles and dandelions need regular encouragement not to do too well. Less effort than a boring lawn though.
First year was fairly underwhelming, since then have had all sorts of insects and birds as constant backdrop. Last few years two pairs of birds, not sure if same pairs, have used it for their nesting spot - there's always one nest in the blackberries. I guess brambles are staying! The back of the garage seems to have a couple of masonry bees every summer, and there's a lovely extra sound background from it all. There's constant birdsong at the back. A local cat keeps trying for those nests, but hasn't got to them yet, and has failed noisily a few times... :)
We've twice spotted a frog, but we have no pond and there's no open water near us, so that's been a bit surprising.
> We've twice spotted a frog, but we have no pond and there's no open water near us, so that's a been bit surprising.
We had a similar experience with salamanders showing up. I could not imagine what path they took to get to our garden in a pretty urban place where the nearest creek is a couple of miles away and generally concrete lined. The gardener however suggested that they come from the street drains (which in our area drain to the SF bay, they aren't sewers which take water to the water treatment plant). The nearest street drain is about 3 houses down, still quite a hike for a small beast that likes the wet but I suppose manageable.
After cutting our ivy back from taking over our patio every year for 3 years, I ripped it out and planted raspberries last spring. They're taking over, which is exactly what I hoped would happen, and seem to have successfully outcompeted any ivy I may have missed. If I'm going to have that spreads relentlessly, I may as well get berries out of it.
We'll get the first fruit this year. They're biennial. Super excited.
Saw an article about edible weeds on HN some time back, and got to know of a book on the same subject for a part of India, recently. Interesting topic. Work with nature instead of against it.
There are hundreds of native bee species in California alone. None of them produce honey stores like the Apis mellifera, the european honeybee. We do, however, depend on the honeybee for food crop pollination, which is a huge industry in the US. Beekeepers haul their hives all over the country following the seasons for different crops. Because they're profitable, we have a lot of honeybee research and attention, and that makes them valuable for pointing out problems that are likely affecting other insects (like native bees).
even wasps are pollinators. honeybees extract and store nectar and save pollen. we need both pollinators and apis mellifera.
bumble bees are ground nesters and solitary, for example..they dont create bee hives. better pollinators than honeybees. ditto with carpenter bees/mason bees. honey bees proliferation can displace local pollinators. a balance is needed.
They might. My sister and I would crush up plants when we were little to make “potions.” We stopped when we made a potion with Serrano peppers at my aunt’s house in Mexico, at least it wasn’t some deadly plants.
Yes. We live in the woods in northern Illinois, and we have taught them to identify wild raspberries and blackberries. They don't eat without running it by us first. That said, I would try to avoid intentionally planting toxic plants in the yard due to both kids and pets.
Or even better, teach your children what isn't safe to eat so that when the fancy strikes them they don't eat poison. Regardless of whether or not it is in your yard, this can only benefit them.
Never been there. By "mild" do you mean 'not that cold', relative to other places at the same latitude? Because I thought the UK was pretty cold, although a UK friend told me Germany is colder (generally).
The climate in the UK is 'cool' but never extreme in either direction. Germany is hotter in the summer and colder in the winter than the UK, mainly due to the UK being an island nation and being in they path of the jet stream.
I'd describe mild as a lack of drastic change in temperature year around. We normally get temperatures between 0C and 20C, with a few outlier days (more so recently - lots of heat waves for obvious reasons...) This changes from North to South, but we rarely get temperatures and crazy weather like you guys in Europe have at the moment.
I'm not from Europe, I'm from India. Other than that, got your points, thanks. That frequent drizzle or rain and also somewhat frequently varying weather I've read about (mainly in kids' stories and later novels with England as the base location), make the UK weather sound interesting. I've lived in places like that, and also in others, where there are well-defined seasons such as wet and dry, hot and cold. I like both kinds.
When I redid my garden I focused on native plants that were unlikely to attract mammals (so no fruiting plants) and would have relatively light water requirements. California is a huge place, so California native doesn't necessarily mean much if you're trying to keep coastal succulents alive in the desert. In theory I've planted things that attract a variety of birds and insects. So far I've attracted mostly hover flies (which I had never seen before) and (very docile) wasps, and a variety of caterpillars. The birds tend to like to bury stuff (whole roasted peanuts…) in the garden and the bees seem more interested in some of the other flowering plants.
That said I would recommend going with native stuff as it will often be more attractive to the indigenous bees and whatnot (European honey bees are, well, European). Sure, Monarchs like milkweed, but the type of milkweed they like will vary by location. Sure, clovers attract a ton of fauna, but the type of clover will vary.
In California, the California Native Plant Society has an invaluable site where you can look up California native plants and where they're typically found[0]. The sticky monkeyflower and tomcat clover have been especially easy to keep alive.
It's a bit late to edit my comment now but yes, most of this list is native to the UK so if you're looking to do something in the US or elsewhere, check online or with your local gardening society to see what works for you.
Surely that's a factor, but habitat fragmentation and loss of biodiversity are also very important, and are directly related to the loss of bees.
Killing "the disease vector" doesn't heal the root problem, which is rampant, culturally and economically endorsed destruction of ecological diversity and the environments that foster it. This is happening on multiple fronts, climate change being one of them.
I agree with the poster who advocated chickens and possums... except that I'd go much further than just chickens and possums. We also need to dramatically rethink the way development happens. And further incentivize land rehabilitation and polyculture farming methods such as permaculture.
You're right. Just let the diseases flow. I relish the sight of diseased children, it's fucking awesome.
Side note: I also make my kids eat slugs off the ground ostensibly to toughen them up, but really I'm gunning for the brain parasites, just because I think it's cool when kids catch brain parasites. It feels like life is just that much closer to a sci-fi/action thriller.
They are somewhat opposed to each other. You spray pesticides and mow to keep ticks down. You don't want to spray pesticides on bees and natural landscaping features taller grasses / plants etc... that provide cover for ticks, not to mention rodents etc... You also want to spray and or mow to keep mosquitoes down. You can mitigate impact on bees by spraying at dusk/night and avoid spraying flowers.
If we let bees die much more than they already have, current farming becomes infeasible not only because other pollinating species can't pick up the slack but because modern farming actually relies heavily on driving bees around in absurd numbers on flatbed trucks going from farm to farm. If we can promote wild populations, it's a very good thing for not only humans but countless other species.
I don't know that it's "unsettling". Both of those seem like objectively good things. The fact that it can be difficult to do both simultaneously is definitely "a thing" but I don't believe it's unsettling. "Difficult to balance" maybe?
Unless you feel that either A- Saving Bees is bad or B- Killing ticks is bad?
I believe that you read it that way. I believe that it's a difficult to understand sentence that doesn't appear to properly articulate the message the writer was attempting to convey and that maybe different word choice would provide greater clarity to their point and further the overall discussion.
TL;dr- we deep enough down the semantics rabbit hole and I'm tapping out. Words, amirite?
And I'm going to go out on a limb and say something very bold. I believe that these are all cut from the same cloth: conventional, extermination focused approaches to "invasive species"; old-school germ theory approaches to infection; peoples' crass approaches to refugees.
I previously read how "local honey" supposedly helps with certain allergies. I do not have personal experience with either allergies or how local honey might help them, but I am curious if anybody has -- or at least if anyone has investigated such ideas.
One problem with this is that most "local" honeys in the USA can be labeled as such even if they are 99%+ non-local honey. Just because it is sold in a farmer's market doesn't mean it is actually local :-(
In the UK I have ordered seeds from Pictorial Meadows http://www.pictorialmeadows.co.uk/ they optimize for more colour, a longer flowering season, and better support for biodiversity.
There was a recent story of a pest control company that accidentally sprayed the wrong yard while the person was away running errands. They even left an invoice.
She'd spent 3 years cultivating a pollinator friendly yard. The next day she noticed there were no butterflies around.
If we're talking about the USA, mosquitos are not dangerous enough to warrant taking any action whatsoever. Of the dozens and dozens of species of mosquito, there are less than a handful that are potentially dangerous, and only in a small region, and only sometimes.
There is no reason to spray chemical toxins in a yard because of mosquitos.
If you want to take action to reduce mosquito numbers, start with pooling water. They are often able to breed in ruts left by vehicles driving on paths where they aren't supposed to be.
Zika [1], West Nile, Encephalitis, Dengue, Chikungunya have all shown up in at least Texas and Florida in the past few years [2]. While I agree reducing pooled water is the most important vector control action you can take, it seems likely that the US will not remain immune from arboviruses in the long term. Thankfully the vast majority of cases continue to be travel-related but there are small numbers of locally-acquired disease being reported since ~2013.
Which is to say in those areas at least you should most definitely wear long clothes, wear an approved repellent, and avoid sleeping in unprotected areas (rooms with open windows without screens, outdoors without netting, etc).
Mosquitoes are pretty generally determined to be bad. Their value to any ecosystem is difficult to justify. However, many methods used to eliminate them have collateral damage.
If someone doesn't take good care of their yard and/or there is an infestation of sorts (E.g. ticks in relation to lyme disease, beetles destroying native plants,etc) some governments may even require you to spray the yard.
Those can be handled in other ways. For instance, seal openings to the outdoors, keep the house clean so ants aren't getting food, lay out ant poison that they take back to their nests so it's more targeted, spray diluted citrus oils in the places spiders like to hang out since they don't like the smell, etc.
Some people have anaphylaxis to bee stings. There are other ways to deal with that, sure, but I have a hard time blaming someone for trying to get rid of an immediately deadly hazard.
I wonder how well this will go over with the local municipalities and homeowner's associations. They are the biggest barriers to converting lawns into useful land, not the cost.
Within the article they mention that this issue is due, in a large part, to monoculture farming so, why not do as cities do with developers who need to provide a certain proportion of affordable housing in new developments and just require a portion of farms to be free growth land. I'm all for this initiative on top of that but pushing for better agricultural land usage would probably increase the efficiency of the land that's actively farmed and provide more evenly spread preserves. It's always easier to target businesses through penalization than individuals through incentivization.
Bees are pretty sensitive to various chemicals, I'm not convinced that the population decline isn't also due to urban chemical usages that we haven't discovered yet.
See also this Nature paper that Paul Stamets is an author on: Extracts of Polypore Mushroom Mycelia Reduce Viruses in Honey Bees
> Waves of highly infectious viruses sweeping through global honey bee populations have contributed to recent declines in honey bee health. Bees have been observed foraging on mushroom mycelium, suggesting that they may be deriving medicinal or nutritional value from fungi. Fungi are known to produce a wide array of chemicals with antimicrobial activity, including compounds active against bacteria, other fungi, or viruses. We tested extracts from the mycelium of multiple polypore fungal species known to have antiviral properties. Extracts from amadou (Fomes) and reishi (Ganoderma) fungi reduced the levels of honey bee deformed wing virus (DWV) and Lake Sinai virus (LSV) in a dose-dependent manner. In field trials, colonies fed Ganoderma resinaceum extract exhibited a 79-fold reduction in DWV and a 45,000-fold reduction in LSV compared to control colonies. These findings indicate honey bees may gain health benefits from fungi and their antimicrobial compounds.
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Houston, we have a problem. And that problem is the children.
And as Whitney Houston used to say, "pass me the coke"^W^W^W^W "I believe the children are our future"
I love bees to death, but white clover in lawns is a good way to introduce children to the business end of honey bees. Trying to get my own family to stop and watch a bush full of honey and bumblebees working has taken years of desensitization both for myself and then for them.
If you don't want bees to be in crisis again in 30 years when those kids are in charge, you need a better plan than this. Or at least a reworded one. What you want is flower beds in yards, (And you need to break the iron fist of the HOA to get more of those), not flowers in lawns.
Bees are pretty good about 'live and let live', at least in my experience. Unless you step on a bumblebee barefoot or something of the like, of course...
I grew up in the bad old 70s, full of bees and other stinging things, walking around barefoot pretty much all summer and I've never been stung on the foot. Likewise, we have a very bee-friendly yard, and our son (now 10) has never been stung by one.
Wasps and hornets? Him once, and myself 2-3 times, but that has nothing to do with plants, those suckers like making hives all over the place.
Try talking to people with bee phobias, instead of acting only on your own experiences. I get a high percentage of people who were either stung as a child or witnessed it happen to someone else.
It's very similar to your wasp experience, and some people's experience with certain dog breeds. What terrifies us is when a creature lashes out and we don't understand why. If we understand we feel we have control of the situation.
Most of us [lack] that feeling of control with wasps (I like parasitic wasps, I still hate the hornet family). Some people have this with chihuahuas or pits (hard to read body language). A lot of people who fear bees have the same thing.
I have to show them that you can put your face right up to bees foraging and nothing happens because they are busy and have no opinion on your proximity (it's the hive they care about).
People won't 'show up' for things they have no feelings about, or things they have negative feelings about. I don't want to deal with another generation of suburban bee-haters when I'm old and grey.
In the past, large wildflowers and flowering bushes in my front yard would draw many butterflies and bees. The city started spaying all neighborhoods for mosquitoes every few weeks. You don't see butterflies or bees around any more. The bee hives in a nearby city were killed by mosquito spraying.
Why shouldn't big landowners get the benefit if they are truly bee friendly? It would take way more small landowners to have the same effect. Why not give a break to people under 5 acres as well?
Minneapolis allows beekeeping in the city as long as your adjacent neighbors sign off on it and you notify the city (there might be fees, but I don’t recall). There isn’t any exemption that I know of but I’m on board with the city allowing residents to keep them. Good on you, Texas (and any place else with friendly bee keeping laws)
We have a small garden box (4'x8') if Raspberry bushes and when it was flowering there was so much activity around it that it sounded like a hive in there!
One thing I've noticed this year is bumble/honey bees in abundance!
If you know a bee-friendly alternative to grass for the Pacific Northwest, please let me know. clover? and where to get seed for it? I have about .5 acres I wouldn't mind turning over.
In Portland, I use grass and clover mix [1]. Can get lawn mixes with more flowers like yarrow and daisies [2]. Or can go to wildflower meadow [3]. Lots of places have mixes with native wildflowers.
I mentioned in a child but I wanted to point out there are different species of bees. Solitary bees are growing in popularity and offer more effective pollination than the tradition honey bee and are non-(or less)aggressive.
Yes. However, it isn't really a colony or hive. I actually had my first bee house this summer (in Texas) in hopes of pollinating my apple tree (spoiler - it worked).
I bought 40 Mason bee larva from https://masonbeesforsale.com around March and around May I found some reeds in my bee house filled with mud (meaning they had created their nest). It was a fun experiment and at no time did I feel like bees were swarming. If anything, they actually left my yard an pollinated my neighbors plants.
There's a few additional cautions I heard in a talk from a rep of the Xerces Society for protecting invertebrates [1].
One is that some of the new pesticides are systemic and durable. This means that you can buy a plant from a nursery that is supposedly bee- or butterfly-friendly, but if it was sprayed with one of these pesticides in it's growth, it now will actually be deadly to the very insects you are trying to attract and nurture.
Also, many of the bred variants of the plants may look nice, but actually be incapable of growing the nectar, etc. that supports the insects we're trying to nurture.
So, best to seek out the original native cultivars and organically grown (or at least with known transient non-systemic pesticides).
Also check out the Xerces society and its materials -- they're a wealth of knowledge on the subject.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 259 ms ] threadI've had the idea for years of playing Johnny Appleseed by being "Ryan Flowerseed" and driving around throwing hand fulls of seeds from native flowering species off the shoulder/into the medians of interstates and highways but it would actually be quite expensive to do it even over relatively short distances and I'd probably get a ticket for littering facepalm.
Likewise, whenever you are running a program to do some kind of home-owner outreach/ change in behavior, its pretty important to have some training, professional educators, validation components to the work. Otherwise the program will get accused of just handing out freebies with no return on investment. As well, you'll want to quantify the residual impact of the program. Typically the goals of these programs is to try and create an overall shift in how people manage their spaces and a 'keeping-up-with-the-joneses' effect. For that to work however, the impact needs to be visually appealing.
Leaving it to homeowners is probably a bad idea.
Here in Indiana many have signs that say something along the lines of "wildflowers, do not cut" so I would presume this means do not spray either.
Part of the problem (as always!) is people. There is the Roadsides for Wildlife program, meaning that the county will not spray herbicide in areas with the sign in order to promote wildlife habitat. But a lot of people will take the signs down. I guess because "dandelions ugly."
Since my "lawn" is already mostly clover and other wild plants anyway, I'm definitely going to look into this program.
I have Pink Chintz, but if I had to do it again I'd probably go with Pink Lemonade (grows faster) mixed with Caraway (culinary)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://www.startribune.com/program-pays-minnesota-homeowner...
Perhaps there is a hardier variety? Or maybe they're expecting people to just plant fresh each spring?
We also have a big bunch of yarrow planted in our hellstrip. It grows great in those tough conditions. We don't even water it, and it's always full of bees and other bugs.
Though, to be fair, I was going to do it anyway, with or without subsidies.
https://www.beelab.umn.edu/
If anyone else would like to outfit their garden with some more bee friendly plants, we've had great luck with the following:-
Most of these are common meadow plants that take little to no effort other than seeding them. Throw them down, cover with grass trimmings, mulch or compost and you're ready to go. This particular list is ideal for a mild, wet climate like the UK. Feel free to modify it depending on your wants and needs!further, the leaves can be cooked as pasta filling. mild taste of cucumber. once you have one borage plant, you will never get rid of them. i have both the blue and white variety.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=480
The himalayan environment spawned some very pernicious and hardy species!
However, the vines themselves are a thorny menace, with a coating of sharp, strong spines that hook backwards towards the root. Catch one of these sometimes slender tendrils around an ankle while walking, and you might think you can just pull through it... and rapidly learn that you shouldn't.
If you can't convince someone to pick them for you, go armoured. I have some old fire turn-out pants that help quite a bit.
Even in Minnesota, there's a push to restore native prairie grasses, which also benefits bees: https://www.beeculture.com/prairie-restoration/
And what would be "native" to Minnesota given that (at least) 2C temperature raise is pretty much in the books?
As climate changes, conditions change, and so the set of plants best suited to any particular location changes as well.
They also look wonderful, so they're very much here to stay.
You can see something similar in our columbine patch, the native blue varieties have reseeded with great success, & the founders are huge and vivacious. But the non-native varieties are pale, small, droopy, stressed, and have not propagated.
P.S. if you're saying you live in coastal CA & tried to grow the local penstemon, did you plant them in the right conditions? They are a xeric plant family, the less you water them the happier they seem...
https://www.laspilitas.com/groups/penstemon/california_penst...
https://www.laspilitas.com/groups/penstemon/california_penst...
Of that one group, the sunflower was the only one that survived. The penstemon were just the biggest magnets for aphids, fungus, and spider mites. One of them bolted, but both had some amazing flowers that the bees loved. In the end I think the soil was just nutrient deficient.
The sunflower has mostly taken over (but is loathe to actually flower), and I've planted a magentaish monkey flower and another lupine. This time around the lupine looks much better. The epilobium and the orange monkey flower continue to thrive.
I'd love to plant another penstemon, but I think next up might be a yellow lupine.
1: https://scontent-sjc3-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/d0c68067fd466fa6...
First year was fairly underwhelming, since then have had all sorts of insects and birds as constant backdrop. Last few years two pairs of birds, not sure if same pairs, have used it for their nesting spot - there's always one nest in the blackberries. I guess brambles are staying! The back of the garage seems to have a couple of masonry bees every summer, and there's a lovely extra sound background from it all. There's constant birdsong at the back. A local cat keeps trying for those nests, but hasn't got to them yet, and has failed noisily a few times... :)
We've twice spotted a frog, but we have no pond and there's no open water near us, so that's been a bit surprising.
We had a similar experience with salamanders showing up. I could not imagine what path they took to get to our garden in a pretty urban place where the nearest creek is a couple of miles away and generally concrete lined. The gardener however suggested that they come from the street drains (which in our area drain to the SF bay, they aren't sewers which take water to the water treatment plant). The nearest street drain is about 3 houses down, still quite a hike for a small beast that likes the wet but I suppose manageable.
We'll get the first fruit this year. They're biennial. Super excited.
1) were there other types of bees, of was all the polinisation done by other insects?
2) what's the point is saving a non-native specie, when so many others need saving?
bumble bees are ground nesters and solitary, for example..they dont create bee hives. better pollinators than honeybees. ditto with carpenter bees/mason bees. honey bees proliferation can displace local pollinators. a balance is needed.
Never been there. By "mild" do you mean 'not that cold', relative to other places at the same latitude? Because I thought the UK was pretty cold, although a UK friend told me Germany is colder (generally).
>path of the jet stream.
As lovemenot said, you probably mean Gulf Stream.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream#Localized_effects
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_stream
That said I would recommend going with native stuff as it will often be more attractive to the indigenous bees and whatnot (European honey bees are, well, European). Sure, Monarchs like milkweed, but the type of milkweed they like will vary by location. Sure, clovers attract a ton of fauna, but the type of clover will vary.
In California, the California Native Plant Society has an invaluable site where you can look up California native plants and where they're typically found[0]. The sticky monkeyflower and tomcat clover have been especially easy to keep alive.
0: https://calscape.org/
Killing "the disease vector" doesn't heal the root problem, which is rampant, culturally and economically endorsed destruction of ecological diversity and the environments that foster it. This is happening on multiple fronts, climate change being one of them.
I agree with the poster who advocated chickens and possums... except that I'd go much further than just chickens and possums. We also need to dramatically rethink the way development happens. And further incentivize land rehabilitation and polyculture farming methods such as permaculture.
https://www.caryinstitute.org/newsroom/biodiversity-impacts-...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3382467/
Side note: I also make my kids eat slugs off the ground ostensibly to toughen them up, but really I'm gunning for the brain parasites, just because I think it's cool when kids catch brain parasites. It feels like life is just that much closer to a sci-fi/action thriller.
Unless you feel that either A- Saving Bees is bad or B- Killing ticks is bad?
TL;dr- we deep enough down the semantics rabbit hole and I'm tapping out. Words, amirite?
And I'm going to go out on a limb and say something very bold. I believe that these are all cut from the same cloth: conventional, extermination focused approaches to "invasive species"; old-school germ theory approaches to infection; peoples' crass approaches to refugees.
https://youtu.be/GFB-d-8_bvY?t=36
She'd spent 3 years cultivating a pollinator friendly yard. The next day she noticed there were no butterflies around.
https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/pest-company-mistakenly...
There is no reason to spray chemical toxins in a yard because of mosquitos.
If you want to take action to reduce mosquito numbers, start with pooling water. They are often able to breed in ruts left by vehicles driving on paths where they aren't supposed to be.
Which is to say in those areas at least you should most definitely wear long clothes, wear an approved repellent, and avoid sleeping in unprotected areas (rooms with open windows without screens, outdoors without netting, etc).
[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/index.html [2, and annual summaries]: https://www.dshs.texas.gov/idcu/disease/arboviral/westNile/r...
I want this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser
If you search for videos, particularly the high speed captures, you'll be impressed.
The spiders are great, they control the flies and other pests. The ants are a minor annoyance.
Bees are pretty sensitive to various chemicals, I'm not convinced that the population decline isn't also due to urban chemical usages that we haven't discovered yet.
> Waves of highly infectious viruses sweeping through global honey bee populations have contributed to recent declines in honey bee health. Bees have been observed foraging on mushroom mycelium, suggesting that they may be deriving medicinal or nutritional value from fungi. Fungi are known to produce a wide array of chemicals with antimicrobial activity, including compounds active against bacteria, other fungi, or viruses. We tested extracts from the mycelium of multiple polypore fungal species known to have antiviral properties. Extracts from amadou (Fomes) and reishi (Ganoderma) fungi reduced the levels of honey bee deformed wing virus (DWV) and Lake Sinai virus (LSV) in a dose-dependent manner. In field trials, colonies fed Ganoderma resinaceum extract exhibited a 79-fold reduction in DWV and a 45,000-fold reduction in LSV compared to control colonies. These findings indicate honey bees may gain health benefits from fungi and their antimicrobial compounds.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-32194-8
And as Whitney Houston used to say, "pass me the coke"^W^W^W^W "I believe the children are our future"
I love bees to death, but white clover in lawns is a good way to introduce children to the business end of honey bees. Trying to get my own family to stop and watch a bush full of honey and bumblebees working has taken years of desensitization both for myself and then for them.
If you don't want bees to be in crisis again in 30 years when those kids are in charge, you need a better plan than this. Or at least a reworded one. What you want is flower beds in yards, (And you need to break the iron fist of the HOA to get more of those), not flowers in lawns.
Wasps and hornets give bees a bad name.
Wasps and hornets? Him once, and myself 2-3 times, but that has nothing to do with plants, those suckers like making hives all over the place.
It's very similar to your wasp experience, and some people's experience with certain dog breeds. What terrifies us is when a creature lashes out and we don't understand why. If we understand we feel we have control of the situation.
Most of us [lack] that feeling of control with wasps (I like parasitic wasps, I still hate the hornet family). Some people have this with chihuahuas or pits (hard to read body language). A lot of people who fear bees have the same thing.
I have to show them that you can put your face right up to bees foraging and nothing happens because they are busy and have no opinion on your proximity (it's the hive they care about).
People won't 'show up' for things they have no feelings about, or things they have negative feelings about. I don't want to deal with another generation of suburban bee-haters when I'm old and grey.
Edit: tortured use of negatives
Or should we shape our world to fit our goals, and help the fearful adapt to it?
I'd say that whether we are supposed to or not, and despite how bad an idea it seems to be, we are shaping the world to fit the most fearful.
It is restricted to property of size 5-20 acres, which I think is a great sweet spot that doesn't allow large landowners to abuse the exemption.
https://txbeeinspection.tamu.edu/public/agricultural-exempti...
https://www.westcoastseeds.com/collections/lawn-solutions/pr...
We have a small garden box (4'x8') if Raspberry bushes and when it was flowering there was so much activity around it that it sounded like a hive in there!
One thing I've noticed this year is bumble/honey bees in abundance!
Also, most home centers have "wildlflower" mix. You'd have to check and see if what is has is native to your area.
1: https://ptlawnseed.com/collections/eco-and-alternative-lawns... 2: https://ptlawnseed.com/collections/eco-and-alternative-lawns... 3: https://ptlawnseed.com/products/pt-454-native-urban-meadow-m...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee#Solitary_and_communal_bees
I have family members who are terrified of bees. Don’t want someone to step on a bee and get stung, etc
I bought 40 Mason bee larva from https://masonbeesforsale.com around March and around May I found some reeds in my bee house filled with mud (meaning they had created their nest). It was a fun experiment and at no time did I feel like bees were swarming. If anything, they actually left my yard an pollinated my neighbors plants.
There's a few additional cautions I heard in a talk from a rep of the Xerces Society for protecting invertebrates [1].
One is that some of the new pesticides are systemic and durable. This means that you can buy a plant from a nursery that is supposedly bee- or butterfly-friendly, but if it was sprayed with one of these pesticides in it's growth, it now will actually be deadly to the very insects you are trying to attract and nurture.
Also, many of the bred variants of the plants may look nice, but actually be incapable of growing the nectar, etc. that supports the insects we're trying to nurture.
So, best to seek out the original native cultivars and organically grown (or at least with known transient non-systemic pesticides).
Also check out the Xerces society and its materials -- they're a wealth of knowledge on the subject.
[1]
[1] https://xerces.org/