 Well, I think we'll get going here. So welcome everybody. My name is Scott Swanson, and I am your host today for the Field of Fork Brought to you by North Dakota State University Extension. This is our seventh year we've done this series, so we're glad you have joined us. On the next slide, you will see our final two webinars for the series. We're actually getting close to the end here. So on this next slide, there is April 13th is Farm to School and Getting Started and Best Practices. And that's with Landa from Kansas State and the University of Missouri, and Anna who's with South Dakota State. And then on April 20th is Preserving Food Safely Home Food Preservation Update with Karen from Kansas State. And on the next slide we show the webinar controls for those that have been in most of these you remember this fairly well. We have a large number of people so we have what's called we're using Zoom webinar. And so we actually ask that you post your questions down there in the chat area, comments and questions and I'll read those to Jan at the end. So if you want, let's go ahead and practice using that chat box. A lot of people have already started it and you guys are aware of it. So just before go ahead and just chat down there. Throw down where you're, where you're coming, joining us from, you know, your city and state if you can, down there in the chat area, perfect. And while you're doing that we'll go to the next slide because we have an acknowledgement. It's a special request this program is sponsored with grant funding from the USDA's agricultural marketing service. I'm going to ask all of you to complete a short online survey that I'll email that will be emailed right after today's webinar. I also will drop the link down in the chat but I believe Bob helps us send out that email not too long after the webinar is over. And after you complete that one you will possibly win a prize. I just have prizes provided the lucky winners from through a random drawing. So be sure to complete your address on the fall on the follow up form including city, state and zip code. So again, welcome to today's webinar and I'm pleased to introduce today's speaker. The next speaker is the professor and extension entomologist at North Dakota State University. For the past 23 years she's provided statewide program leadership for extension entomology, the North care North Dakota integrated pest management program, and the NDSU crop and pest report her extension outreach and applied research focuses on IPM and insect pests of field crops including wheat, barley canola corn chickpeas, dry beans field peas lentil soybeans and sunflower. And pollinators bees and butterflies in gardens and field crops so Jan welcome to the field of fork. Okay, great. Well, it's very nice to be here today especially here in Fargo North Dakota we're having some terrible snow sweet weather. So it's kind of nice to think about gardening and pollinators when we're getting this type of weather we just seem to be holding on to winter here. Most of you are aware though the importance of pollinators and honey bees it's very important to our agriculture and natural ecosystems. In fact, over a third of the world's crop production depends on pollinators and in agriculture crops we mainly use honey bees about 80% for insect pollination on many of the fruit and vegetable crops. And honey bees themselves for their honey is valued and for their pollination services, it's valued at 20 to 30 billion in the US. And North Dakota is number one in honey production. And just alone in North Dakota, our honey is valued at $61 million. Pollinators are very important. And I'm glad that all of us joined this webinar so we can learn how to make our gardens more friendly for them. So unfortunately first I have some disappointing news to report the overall there's been worldwide decline in bee species. This is some research that has been done by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, and they've been monitoring bees for a long time. And you can see here on the graph this is the total number of bee species, an incidence, let me bring up my laser pointer, okay. You can see the yellow and the green lines are from 1950 to 1980, and the blue is 1990 and the purple is 2000. So you can see our diversity and richness has been fairly good up through the 1980s, 1990s, and then we started to see a shift in 2000. Fortunately, this line has been decreasing quite dramatically now in 2010 and, you know, more recently. And this was recently published in One Earth. So we are seeing fewer bees that were found between 2006 and 2015 than before 1990, and you can see that in this graph, where the estimated bee species richness. You can see it's significantly lower in 2010 compared to all the other years mentioned all the other decades. And despite increasing numbers of records, there's more and more people interested in bees. There's a lot more observations being done. Even though we get more observations, the number of worldwide recorded bee species is sharply decreasing. And that's what you're seeing here in this graph. And global records are becoming increasingly more uneven over time, meaning there's hot spots where the bee diversity is really declining. And unfortunately, our favorite butterfly, the monarch, is also declining. I'm sure most of us have heard about this on the news. So it's been about 80% decline in the recent decades. And this is some information from the Center for Biological Diversity. And you can see, you know, it goes up and down a bit, depending on weather and other factors. But overall, it certainly has declined since 1997 to the more present. There's a lot of reasons why one of the major reasons has been the loss of milkweed, the host plant of the caterpillar. And also the overwintering sites. The particular species of monarch I'm referring to is the eastern one that overwinter in Mexico. And in Mexico, they're doing a lot of deforestation. So they're losing their overwintering sites to be able to overwinter successfully. They need, you know, a certain number of trees in order to be protected from the freezing cold. And then there's pesticides. We all know pesticides has certainly played a role in the loss of milkweeds through herbicide use in our field crops and agriculture. And also insecticides can negatively impact the adult butterfly. And we'll talk a little more about this later. And weather. Global warming also will probably play a major role in the decline of monarchs. So we've seen recently 53% decrease from previous seasons and this is information from the Monarch Watch organization. There's a series of people that go out and do counts on the monarchs as they're migrating through. In fact, it's kind of fun to watch on their website to see what the monarchs will be coming up into North Dakota. And you can see overall again, it's the same thing, you know, decline. And we are concerned about the monarch becoming an endangered species. And there's a movement or effort going on to bring back the monarchs. And this is legislation that could yield funding to help boost butterfly protection. The literacy society is the ones that have been very supportive and getting this legislation through the Monarch Act of 2021. And it's already been introduced into both houses of Congress. And it should provide about 25 million over the next five years to improve monarch habitats and planting of milkweed and conservation of their overwintering habitats. And one of the efforts we're doing here with the EIP extension implementation program is we're going to be monitoring through four monarchs here in North Dakota. We'll be looking for the adult monarch butterfly. And then also, if you don't already have milkweed, we'll be planting milkweed for larval monitoring. And it's part of the Monarch Joint Adventure and the University of Wisconsin program. And we're going to be implementing this through our master gardeners and extension agents who are interested. So I'm collaborating with Dr. Esther McGinnis, our extension horticulture on organizing this. And thanks to this funding from USDA NIFA EIP for this activity. A lot of the information I'm going to cover today is available to you in these extension publications. And some of you probably already have them. But if you don't, you can get them as a color PDF by Googling and ESU and the title, Beautiful Landscapes and Butterfly Gardening. You'll be able to find them if you can't just send me an email and I can send you the PDFs. So let's get started. Planting a pollinator garden is probably one of the funnest things I've done in my spare time. But just like buying a new house, one thing you should consider before you get started is location location location. Every site is suitable for pollinators. And in general, most of them like, you know, sheltered, sunny locations, because we are fairly windy here in North Dakota. And, you know, having a sheltered area is important for them where they can feed without being blown with a 40, 50 mile an hour wind. So habitat is number one. We got to provide them with food or flowers, pollen and nectar. If you don't have the right flower, you might not get the right butterfly you want. So, you know, a little knowledge about if you have a favorite butterfly, you know, read up on what that particular butterfly is attracted to for flowers. And the same with the caterpillars or the larvae, they have a different hose than the adult butterfly. So read up to on the larvae, the other life stage. And then there's all different types of bees and we'll talk a little bit, you know, some bees have short tongues, other bees have long tongues. So they like different types of flowers as well. And then the other thing that's very important is to provide it all season long, you know, early, mid, late season flowers. And I mentioned the shelter from winds. Don't forget about bushes, trees. A lot of them also are host plants for caterpillars of the butterflies. So some some of them, instead of going to flowers, go to trees or bushes. So, you know, plant bushes or trees that are attractive to the pollinators as well. Many of them have flowers, basswood is a highly concentrated vector and many honey bees and other native bees just love basswood. They provide watering sources as well. So these are the keys to having a good pollinator garden. And then last but not least is, you know, wise insecticide use, you know, even if you're going to use it at all. And we'll talk more about that later. So let's talk just a little bit about water sources first. You can use a bird bath, but a bird bath is usually two inches deep for water. So for a butterfly or a tiny elliptic bee, a sweat bee, you don't really want something that's that deep. You want more of a shallow pan of water. You'll have to refill it frequently in the summer when it's hot, but they can drown easily in a two inch deep bird bath. And yes, they can go on the side and get a little bit of water, but I found an awful lot of bees in my bird bath dead. So they really just need a shallow pan, you know, if it's a shady area, then you would have to fill it up as much. But butterflies like open areas of soil, sandy areas where they can just do what they call puddling, because they like, they need the minerals in the soil. And so just providing wet open areas where there's no grass, a mud puddle, that's why we see them in country roads that are paved. Oftentimes you'll see butterflies congregating on the gravel there, and they're just collecting water and minerals. Then there's ponds and also butterfly feeders where you can actually feed nectar and put in like slices of fruit, but be aware that also can attract horns, which can sting you, especially in the fall, when they get more aggressive. Then there's habitat we can provide. Well, this looks really nice, you know, having all these bees, these are for bees that nest in tubes. You can put out posts and drill different size holes for different size of bees. And then also you can provide nice little houses and put these on the sides of your house. Here's a butterfly nesting box where they can escape predators. And go inside if it's bad weather, thunderstorm, you know, get out of the rain and the wind. So these are good, but I just read a research paper on, you know, putting out, you know, doing a great big bee nesting housing unit or a hotel like here. And they found that these big units are usually not as successful for bee nesting bees. And that's because they also attract many of the predators that feed on these nesting bees in the tubes. So they found it was better to put out, you know, a smaller box and put out several of them rather than to put them all in one spot. Because then it's easy for the predators to find the nesting bee larvae. And I've had trouble with woodpeckers getting into my nesting hotels. And they just love the little bee larvae, so tasty snack for them. And you can put up screening like here to prevent the woodpeckers from, you know, getting into the tubes and that sort of thing. So that's what I plan to do this year after I observed several different species of woodpeckers eating all my bees in the tubes. So anyway, also, we talked about the bare ground for butterflies and then dead trees. Many of the butterfly caterpillars, they like decomposing trees or wood. And actually, well, that's what they'll feed on the decomposing wood as a caterpillar. So if you neighbors don't mind, you know, leave a dead tree. It's also good for woodpeckers and nesting on birdwatcher as well. So, you know, I know sometimes cities want them dead, but if you live out or taken down. If you live out in the country, maybe you can leave a few dead trees up. And then in the fall, let's be lazy in the fall. So don't cut down your perennials. There's stem nesting bees that will get into some of the perennials that we have. Again, most of our bees are not stem nesters here in North Dakota, but still there's a few of them. You can help them out. Any of those soft stems that are hollow in the middle are good. And so a little mess is good in the fall for those overwintering bees and butterfly caterpillars. And then choose, we kind of covered this already, but just to reemphasize this is very important. There's a variety of plants. Just don't go with one because that only will probably bloom, you know, June, July. There's a few plants that bloom June through September, but usually you have to cut them back like salvia and catnip. Those you can cut back and they'll usually re bloom, but a lot of the perennials, especially the native ones will not. They can incorporate some natives into your garden. They evolved with our bees and our butterflies. So a lot of them actually provide very good nectar and pollen sources. And like the reverse migration of the monarch is very closely tuned to the le actress blazing star. That time of year. And remember, there's several non native species, but of bees, but there may be beneficial as well. And also, it's good rather just planting one plant, plant a lot three or more, you know, try to get a large grouping, because if you have just one lone plant. It's may not do well so it might not attract as many bees. You know, so if you have multiple in areas, it's just better for attracting. And then be careful you're not selecting flowers without nectar out of the cultivated ornamentals now to look pretty. They've given up on some of the pollen and nectar and made some of the reproductive organs into another set of pedals. So this is what we see here. And so this is no food value at all for the pollinators. So choose this is a native echinacea here, the purple cone flower so choose something that is good for them I mean if you really love one of those you can put one in. But I would plant a lot of them. There's a debate now about data versus cultivars and a non native flower, and a lot of people are kind of reluctant to try native flowers because they well let's face it. They might be less attractive, weedy or more likely to lodge. Another for example is the Aster this is the New England Aster. It's a native. It's about four feet tall, and you can see it's lodging. So this one would definitely if you have it in your garden and I have like several of them. I always stay come every year. Otherwise the wind will blow them over. So we see in a natural setting where there's a lot of grass and other flowers close together that support them. So when we put them into our gardens and we have spacing to give them room to grow. Sometimes, you know they're not going to stand up as well. But the ornamental cultivars unfortunately, in the breeding process some of them lost some of their traits that are attractive to pollinators like little or norneter pollen. And here's a cultivar same species as our native one purple dome. That's a fairly good pollinator one. And also I talked a little bit about mouth parts. So some of the cultivated varieties might not be adapted with for bees with different mouth parts. So some of the native flowers are, for example, shallow nectar reserves, asters or milk weeds. You know that's needs a smaller be like you see here this is Agapastaman. And butterflies you would also be a smaller butterfly like a hair straight they have the shorter tongues. So they're going to go to these types of flowers. And the other have deeper nectar reserves like our bee bomb, and they are the bigger bees like bumble bees, and the bigger butterflies like the swallow tails that you see in the picture there that have the longer tongues. So that's why it's good also to provide a variety of flowers if you can. So plan a big pollinator garden. So we've actually done some research on this pollinator preference. We did it in collaboration with Esther McGinnis, Barb Latchewis, Harleen Hatterman Valente, and then I had a postdoc who got her PhD under me Veronica Cales Torres. And we got funding through the North Dakota Department of Ag to do this research. And we looked at asters, false indigo, bee bomb, and sedums. We looked at only the tall sedums, not the small creeping ones. We had eight native species and 20 ornamental cultivators cultivators. And we worked in Fargo at the Hort Garden, 12th Avenue and 18th there was to come into campus, and then out at abso-rational horticulture research area. So we were in South, East, North Dakota. And we did put together an extension plan on this and I'll extract some of the information, but you might want to also download this one to get more information than what I have time to cover today. Also, we have a peer review paper that's going to be coming out as well. So, here, this one is for Esther. And we did ratings. We, Veronica, sat by each flower and then observations on bees, surf and flies or hoover flies, which is a beneficial pollinator. And as a larvae, it is a voracious predator of aphids and many other soft-bodied insect pests. And then we also recorded butterflies. And then here's the column for native or cultivar. And then here's the bluebeam time when it was in bloom. And she sat by the flowers for about three minutes each and did observations and recorded the bees, surfed flies and butterflies, and also collected them. And we did identification. Patrick Bosay did the identification on the bees, surfed flies and butterflies. Usually the butterflies we didn't need to collect because they're easier to identify and larger than bees. So we had the yellow ones here as a native. So we had the New England Aster and Aromac Aster. And then all the others were cultivated. Oh, there's one down here too. Smooth blue. Sorry, I missed that one. But anyway, the number of bees indicate how popular it was or visited. So the more if there's only one bee, it was low. If there was two, it was moderate. If there was three, it was high. If there's four, it was very high. So this is based on accounts that we did. And the same for the surfed flies and butterflies. So you can see here this native one was quite popular with the bees and the surfed flies. You can compare it to the same species but cultivated varieties. You can see the Aromac Potchishki did fairly well, but this purple dome one didn't do quite as well. Didn't have quite as many. And also this could be due to its shorter bloom time. This one blooms a little bit later. And sometimes in North Dakota, if we get an early frost, you know, the asters can be done, you know, in September. But lately we've been having a really nice longer fall. So it's been good to have the asters. Here's another native, and this one didn't attract a spinning. And then there's several other species that are cultivars here. October skies, a dream of beauty. And then also radoms favorite. So this one, actually some of the cultivars did better in our study. Here at the bottom, smooth blue aster. So then we also did total counts of the pollinators and the bees are in black, the surfed flies in yellow and then the butterflies in orange. And we did this study for about two, three years. So here again, you can see the the natives here. This one at the top two should have been highlighted. Sorry about that. But you can see the one here on the bottom, the new England aster native one had the highest number overall. And so it's not always true that the natives attract more pollinators. We found here with the asters. Some of the asters that are cultivars did, you know, fairly good. And I just thought you'd be interested in some pictures of fun work because you're dealing with these beautiful flowers. Again, this is the native one that's real tall would need to be staked in your garden and put it in the back. And then here's another native. And the dream of beauty, which is a beautiful pink one. And there's one information about each Friday and so forth in the publication. So and here's the sedums. You can see all of them are cultivars. And some of the common ones are Adam joy, and then the new release of joy, Adam fire. Mr. Goodbud, you probably recognize some of these. And Adam joy and Adam fire and night embers was our top. These are our top three. So, and they were blooming in August through or August through September. So let's see if Adam fire and joy and night embers holds true for the numbers. And yes, Adam joy and fire had the highest total counts of pollinators and here's night embers number three. So, you know, this was a lot of work that went into this research but it's good information, especially if you want to plant varieties that are really attractive to pollinators. And here's some pictures just gorgeous. This is the painted lady butterfly. Mr. Goodbud didn't do quite as well on the heavy clay soil here in the valley. But I live out in Holly on some sandy low. And my Mr. Goodbud is doing really good so this one likes good drainage and a little bit more sandy soil. And then here we have the Madonna. This one's a wild bergamot and the spotted bee bomb. And you can see, again, this is a very attractive plant for those long tongue bees. And these were, you know, pretty good didn't attract as many butterflies. We also got some good results with the cultivars here on Grand Parade, Marshall Delight, Purple Mildew Resistant, and Raspberry Wine. I just love these names. And some of them are fairly long blooming. I like like that because then you don't have to, you know, cut them back or have a whole bunch of other plants. So this one bloomed July through September. So again, there's not a whole lot of difference here with the natives compared to the non natives. Again, yes, Visula had the highest the wild bergamot. Pugtata is the spotted one. And here's some pictures of the two native ones. This one's just a really interesting flower. I tried to grow it in my garden, but it's fairly short-lived. So if you do grow it, I recommend that you let it go to seed because it will need to recede itself. And here's the purple resistant one with a skipper moth on it. And our conclusion from this study was that, you know, both ornamental cultivars can be beneficial, as well as the native plants. So we recommend that you integrate both into your pollinator gardens. And that might help improve the aesthetics, you know, how it looks, as well as attract and nourish our pollinators. So let's get to the flowers. Here's some spring flowers that we can plant. These are crocuses are just my favorite and I love to plant them. And I've been known to go out and fall on plant hundreds of them. You can put them right into your grass, if you want. And Siberian squeal, too, is a great one, very hearty. Let me explain the table here. B is for B. And gas down here is for butterfly. And H is for hummingbird. So this tells you like the bottom one here, red Columbine attracts all three. So then there's comments over here. And these tables are in the bee pollinator publication. This is a great source because the queen bumblebees want to come out early before a lot of flowers are out. So this is the first thing we see in the spring. So, you know, planting these bulbs can be a lifesaver to the queen bumblebee. And here's some of the native ones here, shown by the X here in the native column. This one is just beautiful. You can buy a bear root now. You can't dig them up, but you can find places that sell the bear root to plant the bear root and get these flowers going in your gardens. I love this one. I have this one everywhere, prairie smoke. It's just beautiful. And it even looks good after it's done flowering. It has those feathery seed heads, and you can just leave them on for the rest of the summer. And they're actually quite attractive. Here's some pictures. I had to put pictures in, of course. And here's my favorite, the crocus and then the past flowers. Columbine is great as well. June flowers. Golden Alexander is a must. You must have that one. It's very good for bumblebees and butterflies. And it's made, I've actually got it to go into July a little bit too. It looks like deal, but it's actually a beautiful plant in the garden. It just gets very full. It's not aggressive. It keeps a nice round shape. And it's also a host plant of the swallowtail, the black swallowtail butterfly, which is one of my favorites. And because it's one of my favorites, I like to plant the hose for the caterpillar, as well as the flowers for the butterfly. We'll talk more about the mouthweed for the monarch. Again, this is the orange one. This one is not native in North Dakota, but it is native more out east and South Dakota and Minnesota. It is naturally growing out in the wild. Again, this one doesn't like the tuberosa, doesn't like the wet soils. And then false indigo bacteria. This is great for your bumblebees. They have kind of a closed flower, so only the big strong bumblebee can make its way into that flower. So again, this is a life saver for that clean bumblebee. And then catnip and salvia, two of my favorite perennials, very hardy. They always come back every year. And they're attractive to bees and butterflies. I get butterflies on my catnip as well, Necta. A walker's loa is a good variety. It's actually quite big. This is not a description of it. This is a description of the garden it was developed at Walker's Loa. But there's a lot of new salvia coming out. So try some of the newer varieties. They have some that have larger flowers on them. And I've seen bumblebees at many of the, like, midnight, many of the newer varieties. Here's just some pictures. This is the Golden Alexander. And yes, it's early. And it's a life saver for that clean bumblebee. And chives, I got some chives I put in actually for eating, but I found out that they were excellent flowers and the butterflies and bees love them. So summer flowers, purple prairie clover. This one is easy to grow and you don't even have to buy the expensive plants in the pots if you don't want. You can just get seed and seed it. It's very easy to seed. It doesn't require a cold overwintering stamp to get it to grow. It's a great landing pad for butterflies. So if you don't have this in, you know, it's very neat too. It keeps a nice little circle. It's only about 15 inches high or so, and about 15 inches wide. So it's kind of a nice plant. You could put it as an edger really. The plant milkweed is excellent for bees and butterflies. Oh, I see. I may have to speed up here. And it grows well. A lot of people think you need really wet soil for it, but I grow it in a dry spot. It's great. I water it during a drought at first, but I don't think it needs as much of a soil. I mean, to get it going, you'd want to water it, you know, maybe every week. But after it's established, mine are doing great in the dry soil. Black-eyed Susan. Liactress. Again, great for butterflies and hummingbirds too. Purple cone flowers. This is another one you must have. You might want to double the size of your garden. Once you start looking at all these beautiful flowers, you realize you want, you know, you want to try that one and that one. It just gets going. It's quite big. I started just a couple and now I have about 10 gardens or more. So anyway, bee balm. We kind of covered that. The fissula loza. That's that wild bergamot. It's another name. Hissa. You must have that. That is just fantastic attraction for everything. And it's really easy to grow and it's gorgeous. It's fairly tall. So you put it either in the middle, you know, have a tall garden in the middle, going less height or in the back. Culver's root. That one is also great for vertical accent, but it likes it a little moist. Joe Pie weed. The butterflies just love this in the fall. A very important food source for them. Just covered with butterflies. Again, it says my soils, but I got mine in a dry spot. So I do mulch though with wood chips. And the middle blazing star is the favorite of the monarch. If you want monarchs, you must plant this one. It's very tall four to five feet. So you'll need to stake it. Put it on large groups. They only grow about 12 inches wide for spacing. So you can put a lot of them in a small amount of area. Good flowers. Got a lot of his up some seal. These are all good. These aren't native, but Russian stage is very attractive. Sunflower, a must, you know, put that in your garden where you're growing your vegetable crops and, you know, you'll have some good pollinators that will come in there and pollinate your squash and pumpkins. These are all flowers. I think I mentioned how important they are. They're very, very important for those butterflies that do reverse migrations. The bees need to build up energy reserves for overwintering in their nest and soil. This is a golden rod. This is one I just love. It's a native one and it's very, it's large, but it stays in its area and it's just gorgeous. Tall sedum on New England asters. We kind of talked about them. A lot of these pictures are from my garden. And there's a lot of, don't forget about the annuals. I use these to fill in between my perennials. And my favorites are zinnias, but don't plant the doubles. They don't have any nutrient nectar available. So, and Lantana are my, and Cosmose. So, Analyseum. So I get a lot of favorites. And then herbs too. I plant deal. I just let it go to seed and it comes back every year so I don't have to replant it. And it's one of my favorites because my favorite butterflies, the black swallowtail. This is the caterpillar and it was on my deal, which is the host of the caterpillar. So, you know, deal lavender, always plant lavender as well. That's just a good all around. Plus it smells so good. So put it close to where you'll be sitting on the patio. And then milk leaves. There's a lot of different species of milk leaves. And this is the one we already talked about tuberosa, the orange one. But this kind of gives you an idea what types of soils they do best in. And the common milkweed, I'll talk a little bit more about that, but world milkweed, I get this one is nice. I have this one. It's a smaller one. I just want milkweed is by far my favorite. And it doesn't really need as moist soils as you think it'll do good in moist soils as well but I surprised how well it's doing in my dry soils. I got the showing milkweed to. I also made the mistake, I think, of planting common milkweed because it's so aggressive. And it is a noxious weed in Cavalier, Winville, Sheridan, Trail and Wells County. But it's not on the state noxious weed list so you can plant it. But it's not the best choice. If you want it to stay in a certain spot, it's definitely not going to stay there. But I just want milkweed is the better choice. And don't forget about grasses. Grasses are the host for many of the caterpillars of the butterflies and moths. For example, little blue stems, one of my favorites, and it's a host for nine skipper moths, including the endangered Dakota skipper and the common woodnip that you see here. I just wanted to get about putting in some grass. I know it doesn't have beautiful flower on it, but very important if you want the insect to complete its whole life cycle in your gardens. So in the butterfly fact sheets, we got a list for all the different butterflies. This is just part of it. And it shows you what they feed on, you know, early, mid and late. Black swallowtail, my favorite. You know, flocks, bee bombs, sunflower, thistle, milkweed, a falpha. You know, so I'm going to put these in my garden, maybe not a falpha, but definitely genius because I want to see this flying around when I'm out working in my garden. So in here again, the black swallowtail, my favorite deal. I like Alexander, you know, it's also called the parsley worm because it likes to deal parsley and carrots. So a lot of the caterpillars might look like pests to you, so be kind of careful. You know, this spiny guy here is the red admiral butterfly. And before you reach for that insecticide, you know, you might want to take some time to identify that caterpillar. And seasonal calendars is also available on the fact sheet, you know, when do I expect to see my black swallowtail might come in in May and then it's common in July. And just a little bit, I'm going to end here on pesticide use. About a third of the honeybee colonies are dying. And that also includes we don't have as good data for native bees and bumblebees, but we know they're dying as well. Monarchs are declining and a lot of this is due to our pesticide use in agriculture. And these insects are exposed through foliar sprays. And then with seed treatments as they're planting and going through the plants in the machine, the dust gets scraped off of the insecticide seed treatment and then it can move long distances we found in our research. And it can end up on that bandy line that is feeding that early season bumblebee clean and killer. It could also contaminate water and if there's any flowering weeds, or it if you're close to, you know, you live out in the country. You can get into your garden and just be aware bees are extremely sensitive to the neonicotinoid group for a. So do not use these at all on any of your flowers. So look for for a it should be on the label that tells you what group of insecticide. It belongs to. And if you see this label. All the neonicotinoid labels that means it's highly toxic to bees and you won't want to use it in your garden. So try to select short residual pesticides that are selective to certain past, like a foods, or you can use like BT but still spring chances for stocky eye for any caterpillar that might be a past. So trying to reduce the impact on our mom targets are pollinators and then limit any broad spectrum or systemic insecticides that are trans located through the plant. If it's systemic like the neonicotinoids it can move up and get into the pollen and nectar. And of course don't spray when it's windy. Because then you're going to get drift and or an inversion. So solutions again. dust are very bad the dust can be very hairy. And that can be the dust can glue onto their hair that's how they collect pollen. It's just more liquid. Fortunately, a lot of the insecticide formulations come pre mix for homeowners. So that's what I would encourage you to use as some of those pre mix, if you have to spray for insect past. And again, avoid, you know, you know, don't spray during peak bloom when all your flowers are blooming. But if there's actually a flower or plant that's being attacked by a insect pass and it's going to happen because it's happened to me and I've had to spray, even though I didn't want. I went out very late in the evening that is the preferred time. You know, like nine 10 o'clock saw the bees are back in their hives butterflies are active them they're just daytime flyers. And I wait to see if the temperature gets cool but sometimes in the summer doesn't get that cold below 50 or 55. And just remember, if it's real hot in the 90s like we were last year. And butterflies will be foraging a little bit earlier, and they'll also continue a little bit longer into the evening so just be aware of that. You know spray as late as you can. And here's some pollinator extension resources that have been developed over the years so you know these are for you so be sure that you use them if you're interested there's one on endangered pollinators of North Dakota and insects that look like bees. I already talked about these three. And don't forget there's excellent resources out there. I got these two books from zero seas recently, and they're great so if you're wondering what the plan for your favorite be or your or for monarchs. So go ahead, buy these books are not that expensive and the zero seas does awful lot for pollinators. So check out the website. And that's all I have sorry I ran a little bit long. Well thanks Jan that was great. And we started a couple minutes late so no big deal. Okay, try to get a few questions in or maybe all of them there's a decent number of them here in the chat so we'll just start rolling on through. First one came from Daniel and he says he likes to show sunflowers at the county fair. And he if he has bug damage on the sunflowers he cannot exhibit them. So how can you get rid of the damaging insects without hurting the bees. So we probably going to have to plant a lot of sunflowers and select ones that have the least amount of damage sunflowers are native to North America. And so, because of that they do have a lot of instant past they evolved with the sunflowers. So there's not a whole lot unless you go on a spray insecticides. I mean, some of the past that go after sunflowers are can destroy the head and get into the seed. This would affect the pollinators so well but there is netting bags that you can put overheads to protect them. But then the pollinators would be able to get them but there really isn't a good way to do that unless you can plant a lot of certain varieties. The ones on the many of the insects are edge past so they only get into the edges most concentrated so maybe you can plant like a trap crop around the outer edge of your field that you don't want to you know you're not concerned. So that will help you trap most of the insect past and then the ones on the inside usually have fewer past of sunflower many of them are edge insects so. That sounds good. healthy is wondering how can she set up a bird bath to be a water source for the pollinators, but not a breeding ground for the mosquitoes. Well, you should clean your bird bath every day. And then it won't be a problem for mosquitoes and what I've done in my bird bath is depends how big your bird bath is but mine is like fairly big it's 20 inches wide or so. And I put a big flat rock that goes above the water in the middle, and then the birds can still get in around the side and and take a bath, unless it's a real big bird. But anyway, yeah yeah that helps because in the bees and the butterflies will they like the rock, a flat rock and they can go to the water then and drink without drowning. That makes sense. Yeah, good. You should change it every day to prevent the mosquitoes from breeding. Good deal change it every day. So Levan is wondering, when is the best time to clean our gardens, as to not endanger the bees that might be hibernating in the grass and leaves. I just wait till spring. I enjoy my fall and I actually like looking at the flower heads throughout the winter. I'm also a bird that so it's amazing how many birds like the feed on the flowers heads of, especially the native flowers perennials. All right. Ginger is wondering how do we know the flowers without nectar before buying them. Um, you don't. Read about what they say in the description. Sometimes they'll say, um, you know, good for bees are good for butterflies. So then you're pretty much assured. But if you see a double petal, any double petals are not good. Like that one cone flower where it had the petals on the edge, which were larger. And then on the dome, it had the shorter petals. That's a double pet. That's one form of a double petal. And then you can also get double petals everywhere throughout the flower head. Don't buy those. Those are the ones that have been modified. So and some of the reproductive parts that would be nectar and pollen have gone to the development of more petals. Okay. Alexis is wondering if you could speak a little bit on hummingbirds. Are they common in Western North Dakota? Oh, yes. We only get one species. So, um, well, we could get some migrants, but I put out a lot of hummingbird feeders as well. And we get the ruby-throated hummingbird. But during migration, you could get sometimes they get blown off course if there's a storm. You could get an Anna's hummingbird or, you know, anything exciting. So, um, Yeah, it's a lot of fun to watch the hummingbirds. Don't put the feeders too close to your window. You want to keep them a little bit away from the window so they don't smash into it. Yeah. Is the skipper a moth or a butterfly? It's a moth. It looks like a butterfly, but it's a beautiful moth. Is BT Kill Monarch Butterflies? Um, well, if I didn't mostly talking about the BT inside corn, that's genetic engineering. And that is, you know, protect, is inside the plant. And the only way you're going to get it is if you're a larvae chewing like European corn borer inside that plant or corn root when feeding on the roots. If the Monarch, there's been studies done, the Monarch butterfly feeding on the pollen of corn during pollination will not be affected. Because they have, they can't control over whether these BT genes are released in the plant. So like for corn root worm, it's just the roots for corn borer. It's just the stalk and the leaves. It's not the pollen or the, well, it doesn't produce much nectar, but, but not on the pollen. So, so we can control where it's at. But for the BT that you buy over the counter like Daypell and Spray, yes. It can kill any true caterpillar that has a true caterpillar is one that has two to five abdominal prolates. They don't get saw flying larvae, for example, have six or more pro legs, and they look like a caterpillar, but they're not. They're not a true caterpillar. So BT won't kill them. But, you know, unfortunately, our butterflies and moss, it will kill all caterpillar stage. And it acts as a, it has to be ingested though. So it's a true caterpillar. And usually the young stages are the preferred time to spray. And then eventually it causes the gut to rupture and then we die. But that's kind of a long wind at answer, I guess. There's just a couple of more here. Phil, I don't know. This might be a tricky one to try to answer, but Phil is wondering if there's a hope to develop a nationwide interstate highway system habitat for monarch and be pollinators. Oh, I thought you were telling me there is. No, I wish there was. I know there's some efforts to get some of that going. You know, I drive down interstate 94, the main road going east to west and North Dakota. Well, I think of this all this a pretty beautiful habitat to have flowers all the way when you go to Bismarck. Yeah, but yeah, there's a lot of land out there, but they do use that for hay for the cattle. So it's usually hay, you know, for the cattle so, but we still could have just, you know, a narrow section or maybe certain areas just around certain areas where we could have corridors where we could plant. No, I would love. In fact, I talked at the weed control association out of Bismarck this winter. And I actually suggested that to them that they plant pollinator corridors along our highways because a lot of these butterflies, they starve to death because they can't find enough flowers. And if we had these corridors, they would be able to survive and travels and move around at the same time. Yeah. Okay, there's like two more here how long should the straws be for bee nesting boxes with mesh. And then what is the best mesh for the nesting boxes for bees a quarter or half. I would recommend you to prevent the hunt the woodpeckers from getting in. I assume that's what you're. I would say he didn't say. You can buy the tubes. They're about six inches long. And there's different sizes for different size bees. We don't have very many bees that would nesting to bees that would use the great big ones that are half inch. And I think that would be a quarter inch. And then if you want to put a protected house screen on the outside to protect, you know, have it come out a little bit so it's away from the entrance of the tube. And then you'd want to use at least a quarter inch so the bees can get through. There's a couple in the Q&A that I'm going to ask quick first is just a comment, Mary, I do see yours in there she's a Becker County master gardener and she's interested in the monarch program so I'm going to send you. I'll send you her email she threw it in there. Thank you. And then two quick ones. Somebody's wondering about effective homemade insecticide options. Well, you mean, like botanicals. There really isn't very many. We don't really recommend the homemade insecticide soap anymore, because the stuff you buy at the store puts into any perfumes and other chemicals that can cause phytotoxic reaction on plants and reduce their effectiveness. So we recommend that you buy the commercial stuff like safer insecticidal soap. That doesn't have those perfumes and dies in there that will negatively affect the performance of the chemical. I, I know there's some things that you know they're supposed to work. But I don't think they're very effective so if you had high numbers of the past, most likely, you're going to eventually, it might repel them there's some like things that repel certain past. Trying to think of something like garlic. Some people have used garlic and sprayed that on plants and things but I think you're better off going with a bio rationale which includes you know botanical insecticides microbial like the BT and what's the other one, botanical but like meme seed extract, that's from a plant that's grown in India, the meme tree. And you can buy that in pre mix bottles so you don't have to bother with mixing it. It's all ready for you to go. You can put protective screens you can put over like garden plants but then that might also impact the pollinators. If they, you know, can't if it doesn't have like a screen hole where it's big enough for them to get through. And I've, I've used some chicken wire to prevent beer from eating some of my flowers. Wherever I have the chicken wire and stuff. That seems to disturb the bumblebees and the butterflies. They don't like that on their soul. But I can't really think of a good thing you could do it so calm. I know that's for dear more but you can buy that real smelly so and hang it on shrubs and things you don't want the deer eating. It works to some extent but 100% So there's one last one and we might have to do a little searching or maybe throw something that chat to a link here if we can think of one but somebody's asking where can they find information that you shared about the most careful less harmful methods of using insecticides. Is there like a website. I did do a video on that. Well, that's a older video. Well, first off, all synthetic insecticides that are commercially made. They're made to kill insects. All of our pollinators are insects. So if you can just think of them they're all toxic. Going to killings are your bumblebees and your bees and butterflies. If you spray them. What I do is when I got back I had a real bad infestation of lace bugs last year was on my salvia, my neck done. They were, they were killing the plants. So I had to do something. So what I did is I just went out at night and sprayed for a spot treated just the plants I had to. And they're most commonly found on the undersides of the leaves so you know I'm treating that and I don't treat the flowers or if it's flowering I'll cut it off. If I have to go very high up. So as long as that insecticide dries before the bee, you know, comes and lands on the leaves or the butterfly after dries it's much safer. So you're most concerned when it's wet. So do it in the late evening by morning and it'll be dry. Well if anybody else had any other questions or maybe they didn't want to follow up with something they had, or that we talked about obviously there's Jen's email address you guys can reach out to her that way if you want if that is it and thanks for staying on a little longer people we went a little longer with all the questions and started a little late but thank you Jen for the great presentation for answering all our questions. Thank you and have a great day and thanks spring.