 Let's talk about now pollinators, bees and other pollinators. You know, we're talking about having a great garden, a productive garden. And to have a productive garden, we need to be full of activity by our pollinators. And so tonight we're going to learn about how to attract and keep those pollinators in our home landscape. And to do that for us, we have Todd Wyman, the Cass County Horticulture agent. A beekeeper himself. So let's welcome Todd to the forums. A lot of times we'll get asked on honey beekeeping. If you're in full gear, is it possible not to get stung? I think I've been stung every time and it's just what it is. So I want to get that clear that I've been stung a lot. So if I start shaking, it's because of that. The talk I have tonight, I have a talk that is from Russ Bryant. He did a lot of work with native bees and trying to find out information on them. There really isn't a lot out there for our native North Dakota pollinators and bees. There just isn't a lot of information. There is information on regular honey bees and other types of creatures, but there really isn't a lot. And so I'm going to go through his presentation and I didn't dumb it down or anything like that. But I will skip certain parts, but we'll go through it and go from there, I guess. Skip that. With all the honey bee talk and such, there's a number of different good things that basically come from honey bees, but also from the other pollinators too and we're going to focus more on those tonight. The pollination of our plants for our food supply is in trouble basically. 95 agricultural plants benefit from that. It's $1.5 billion. There's a lot of, our way of life is affected by pollination of these little bees on flowers and also our food sources and there's some problems with that. And we're going to kind of get into that a little bit. Another thing I'd like to point out is that some of these insects are becoming extinct and some are extinct. There's 128 native pollinators that they have names for and such, but there are more out there that they don't. And in many cases, what will happen is these will actually become extinct before they can name them and they just won't be around. Some of them might have an old one in the collection and say, what is that? And they figure it out, but there aren't any more. And it has to do with a lot of different things. Why would that matter if we don't have the cute little gray one with the little polka dots on it? These insects have a venom in them that they're thinking is good for a lot of the diseases we have, HIV, AIDS, cancer and such. And so if those insects disappear, they're really, it's near impossible to create that venom from just chemicals and such. This is not me. If this was me, I'd be the person fully dressed, completely engulfed in the suit with extra gloves. I don't like to be stung, but it happens. So I'd be the guy over on the right, dirty suits, completely safe, standing furthest away from everything. The other two guys, I've met guys like that and at first it's good, and after a while they all get stung and they do actual bee dances. So when I say when you work with any of these bees, suit up. One major thing to think about is that the bees like flowers and if you have a monocrop where it's just one solid field of, for example, corn or what have you, you don't really have any of the prairie flowers in there. Sometimes it's not even weed. The fields are clean. There's nothing but one thing. And if you were to eat, for example, if you were to eat just apples every day, apples are good, but if you only ate apples, as far as the diet of the bee, it's kind of a poor diet. So multiple different flowers. And some people say, well, what can I plant? What is the best flower to plant? And I always say plant multiple species. You don't exactly know that they're going to eat one thing over another. You can kind of guess. But as far as if you had 50 different flowers in your garden versus two, I would say you'd have a much better, healthier bee population. And this decides, of course, I've had honeybees and mistakes happen. And I've come out there and all my bees are dead. And it was because of that. And, you know, things happen, but it's not good. So if it's killing your honeybees, it will also be killing your native bees, too. The study by Russ, he wanted to find out two different things from this. He wanted to see if there was a comparison or if there's a difference or what would be the importance of having a lot of floral diversity or having a very good nesting environment. And a lot of the bees we have in North Dakota are ground bees. And so fertile soil, sandy wound soil, and I've seen them all at Absaraka. I've actually walked into them and got out really slowly. But, you know, there's a lot of different kinds of environments that they can have. And so he wanted to see, is it the food source or isn't the environment or both or neither? What would you find out from this study? And I'll get to that toward the end. And I think you might be a little bit surprised by it. You did some studies here. Some of you probably across the state have been to these towns or actually live in these areas. And you can obviously read what it says. But there are different studies that were done where he did this. CRP or Restored Prairie, I think most people know what that is, versus Native Prairie. And if you can look at, and you can see on the pictures here, you'll see that the Native Prairie has a wider diversity of forbs, different herbaceous flowers. The CRP, it's not just one system, but it does not have a diversity as the Native Prairie does. This is a picture of Russ, obviously before he started this thing. He's nice and clean. He's not, you know, it's just a picture of Russ out there. And these are the blue vein traps that he used to capture the insects in the area and do counts. And you can't really just go out there and count them because obviously they move. But if you capture them in this trap, you can, you'll know. Native Bee Catches, he did this over a two-year period. On the CRP, you can see that for the 2012, I don't think there's a point right here. Anyways, for 2012 and 2013, for the first, for 2012, the CRP had 7,232,000 bees trapped. And then in 2013, 4,011. And you get it to the Native Prairie and it's a very almost exact number. It's 5,662 versus 5,659, almost insignificant number of that. So it's very interesting as to, if you look at the CRP, there's a great difference in the numbers in the Native Prairie. It's more of a stable environment. I love the picture of this bee. I just, you know, I'd hate to have one that size, but I love the picture of it. And if you look at this closely, you'll see that the different types of bees and how many he had. This bee right here was one that he said, they call it the bigger bee. And it's a, well, I can't even hardly say it. Alas, alas, told us. I said it earlier, but I'm not going to try it again. But this is the most abundant Native Bee. And if you look on the top left, you'll see that that's where the range is. It's close to 8,500 compared to the others. There's a number of different tools that were used to do this. And some of the science behind it is quite fascinating. And some of it's kind of boring for me anyways, because I mean, I don't think I really get the full gist of it, but I'll do the best I can to keep it at a level that you'll appreciate. And if not, thank you for not falling asleep while I'm talking. If you look at the pollination, they checked three different types of needs for the pollination model. He needs land, different pollinator species, and what kind of land. And he kind of went through this a little bit. The crops that you see there are actually crops that people grow, not really wildflowers. And he went through the different types of what the bees did with that. As far as, well, let's skip this one. Inputs and outputs. Basically, a common sense type of thing is that you would need both. Nesty Habit and floral source maps. And you have a good pollinator habitat, but that's not really scientific. And so he went a little bit further with that and checked it out. Here's just a picture of all the part of south, or North Dakota, excuse me. And from space, kind of not really much there. But if you look at on this one here, here you show the areas of high quality where everything was great. There's a lot of pollinators in the blue and in the red. It's real poor quality that they have a very difficult time surviving there. They just weren't very many there at all, if any. Here's a little more of a differentiation. Again, floral resources versus potential nesting locations. One thing that he did find with this is that the better the floral, the more diverse floral population that he had, the more native species he had, the more bees. Even if the ground was perfect for nesting, if you didn't have the floral, there just wasn't very many bees. And so if you think, well, both are necessary. In all reality, it would be better if you had to choose one to have a higher floral place than an actual place for them to drill holes and to live. That's what I got out of this, and it would probably be very interesting. Here, I kept these slides in here mainly for the pictures of the bees. They're quite beautiful and fascinating. And in the end, he'll combine it all and we'll go through the objectives. But for this here, if you want to take a look at them, and if anyone has very good Latin knowledge, Tom, no, no, it's aga postaman, I believe, melisodes. If you look at these creatures, they're just fantastic and beautiful. Last you'll gloss them. Bumbas are a bumble bee, obviously. And they're not as fun to actually pet, as you might think. Here, the information was gathered and combined. And basically, if you have poor quality habitat, for example, poor soil and poor nesting, you still have a lot of pollinators. And that was the big thing that I pulled out of this. And I thought it would be quite fascinating because I thought, well, if they're not there, if they can't really build a good nest, they probably won't be there even with the flowers. But that's not what I got out of the study. And I thought it would be quite fascinating with that. Obviously, if you have from this, if you had a lot of different diversity in your plants, the bees just did well, regardless of the habitat, the types of soil. If you look on this map in North Dakota, the best place to find these would be out in the southwest corner. Kind of on the eastern side, it's like a sea of red. It's just quite unbelievable what isn't there versus you get more to the western part of the state. And I guess that kind of makes sense if you get more into the monocrops and such. I'm going to jump ahead here. There's a ton of people who I talked to about this so I can understand it. And I'd like to thank them all, but that would take about five minutes and so thank you. If you look at this here, a lot of people want to build things. And if you're like me, you want to build things, but you really don't have the skill, and so I just pay for it. You can make these. This is a little nesting box. And I'm just going to read off of here. It's basically a 4-inch by 4-inch nesting box. And you want untreated wood. And if you don't remember anything at all, you want to use untreated wood. And you want to drill holes in there. And in here, he has 3-eighth-inch holes and 3-inches deep. And these have done quite well for him for bees. Also wax-free parchment paper in there. And I'll show you some of the pictures of bees that moved in here. He had this by some Elfalfields in North Dakota. A little closer look. You see there's a little bee in there just kind of doing its thing. Probably not wanting its picture taken. And then he pulled one out and a little closer look at it. And it has its arms pinned down. So it can't really wave at you, but you can see like, hey, I don't think he's too happy, but something to think about, I guess. You can build these things and have success. I've seen kids do this, too, with straws from different types. You can buy the straws, or sometimes kids will get a bunch from a restaurant. It's like, oh, great, now what do we do with these? And they've made different types of homes with those, too. You might be wondering why I have this Western Prairie Fringe War Kid picture on here. It's a very rare, beautiful plant that's found here in North Dakota. This is a collection that I brought and I have over there behind Scott's. You can look at it, but don't touch it because it's very difficult to make these collections a lot of time and effort. If you look at all these creatures here, they are all associated with this. This plant. So if something were to happen to this plant or some of these pollinators, you break a cycle and the others would soon cease to exist. You got your sinks moss up on the top right, some of your weevils on the left feet on the plant. They all are hooked into this plant in some way or another. And so I find that to be quite interesting and how delicate things are. Here are some, people always are, what's the difference between honey bees and bumble bees? Well, bumble bees are bigger, but that doesn't help. You take a look at this. We have some worker bees up there in the top, honey bees and in the bottom, just some regular bumble bees. And I have those also here. It looks like my time is about up. Here's a picture of butterflies in North Dakota. The actual butterflies gardening in North Dakota. This is a publication that you can only get online now. So if you want it, you need to print it off yourself. And wonderful publication and beautiful pictures goes through a number of different flowers for attracting pollinators. So it's like, well, I wish you had said something about that. If you pull this slide up, you'll have a ton of different flowers that attract beautiful butterflies and you can read on that. So it looks like I got a few minutes. If anyone has any questions or some of you probably are still awake, you want to get your shirt asked me. And what can we do in our gardens to help the bees? How can I bring bees just to have a diversity of flowers? Or what else can I do? I would say if you did a diversity of flowers. And also if you could get back on spraying down some flowers. Some of these things that, well, I really don't want any type of insect around and I spray my yard and I kill everything. Well, that'll kill these too. You want to keep that in mind. Maybe even time of day, if you were to spray. If you spray at night and people think there might be something wrong with you or maybe you get different neighbors or something. But a lot of places that are conscientious will try to spray some of their things at night when the bees are inside. And so that's something to think about too. Because then you won't get the chemical directly onto the bee just really about the residual. Yeah, just the residual is not right on the bee. Correct. So why do beekeepers put their hive so close to roadways? They're heavy. I don't know. You can't really... If you're like me, I'm out of shape. You know, maybe 100 pounds of box when they're full. So you see me carrying three or four and all. Maybe half one. And they're heavy. And also so they drive them out there and if they're closer to the road, then it's a lot easier. That's why I do it. You know, the night time way in the back you have to drive through holes and things to get out there. That's right. To compromise. How about the butterfly service pollinators of tree fruits or vegetables? Butterfly service pollinators also. For example, the sphinx moth on there. You run about fruits. You find them everywhere on grape vines and other vines. Also you'll find those in different types of flowers. They don't necessarily just pollinate one type. I know certain species do. But as far as exactly which one only pollinates, for example, apples, I don't know. How about, do you know if cities or communities in our state have laws or regulations about having a bee hive in town? Even if you are allowed to have a bee hive in town, I would suggest not to. People have been sued for that. And many times it wasn't even their bees or even a bee that they've lost. And so I would not recommend it even if your town said, yeah, we're going to give you free bees and put them out there. I would try to make a friend out in the country somewhere and do that versus having them in town. Unless you like a lot of headache, then have them in town, yeah. But what if a colony of bees moves into the ground by my home? Is there a way to encourage them to move on? Collin of bees, yeah. To have them move on versus to just kill them all. Killing them is pretty easy to kill them. But as far as having them move on, you can make it a little miserable. Maybe turn the water hose on a little more, make it nice and muddy. Just make their environment somewhat miserable. I don't know. I don't really know how to do that. Maybe walk through there and see what happens to you. No, I don't know. Let's talk about, we get a lot of these questions in the fall and the confusion about bees versus wasps. And people think there are bees that are attacking them or bees are nesting in the ground where it's actually germinial jackets, for example. Can you talk about that? Yeah. A lot of times people will think it's a bee and it really is a wasp or something else. But these are somewhat docile. I've had these before, obviously. And then sometimes if it's a gentle hive, not worn gloves, put your hand on there, they'll crawl on you. Then other times they'll sting you. But they're not like a wasp where you just walk by and they see it and they come out of nowhere and they'll sting you multiple times. A honeybee, for example, can sting you once. And then they die. Or a wasp, they're not going to just go away. They'll just keep coming. And so wasps, you can, you know, wasps also, their populations are more intense in the fall. And then that's when we get these bees, so-called bee questions. You get all these bee-like pests coming after us in fall, looking for food. And these are actually wasps that are causing aggression. And there are ways to control wasps in the ground. They're like, just use the insecticide that we don't want to use to protect the bees. We just use them because that's the wasp weakness, like carburetor 7, just sprinkle some of that dust in a wasp nest at night. And that's a good way to control wasps. I'd have somebody else sprinkle it. I wouldn't do it myself. I'd have somebody else do it. They're tough. And then there's traps for them too, but trapping them is kind of, that's just kind of fun because there'll be thousands and you won't even make a dent. Pray for frosts and then it'll all stop and start up again. It's fun that people recognize that bees are a positive. Bees are docile. We need bees and we should not confuse them with those fall wasp problems. It's true. How about bumblebees too? You can get right up to a bumblebee. And as long as you don't, oh, that's really nice. They'll leave you alone. They don't care. They just don't care about you. But if you actually touch them, they care a little bit. They call it sitting mosquito spraying. Is that harm bees? We're going to know what they're using. The mosquito spraying, though, I'm actually kind of for that. I'm not a big fan of West Nile virus. And many times, in fact, when they spray, in almost all cases, I've ever seen it that night, there's also other things you can do too, like mosquito dunks, the bacillus, thern genesis to kill the mosquitoes. You throw a little chunk in the pond and it just takes care of it. The thing I read, it's supposed to be safe for everything they drink except for the little larvae or mosquitoes. I like BT a lot better than a lot of the things. But if I had a choice, I would say I'd rather have no mosquitoes and a few dead bees than both. The BT applications that they use to kill the larva are mosquitoes. That's a bee-friendly product. The bacillus thern genesis is a bee-friendly product. One of your nurses will carry that. They'll say, can a bee in small tea? Well, you know, just follow the directions. That's a whole other topic we could have as far as city-wide mosquito spraying and what is the true efficacy of that, which is actually very, very limited. What do you think about a metacloprid? Have you heard about that controversy? A metacloprid, the common soil drench that we're using more and more in our home landscapes and some of the risks that's affecting our honey bees. Have you heard about that at all? I haven't heard about it. Have you talked about this? No. A metacloprid, I'll talk about for just a few seconds here just because there's a question on it. A metacloprid is a very common soil drench now that we use to get a systemic action to kill pests, the boars inside of trees, for example. And a metacloprid is very powerful for many types of insect pests on several different types of crops. But there is data now that's a general concern about a metacloprid and these other neonicotinoids, or new nicotine products that are affecting our bee populations. Bees get exposed to these systemic chemicals when they work the flowers and the bees, it reduces their foraging activity. There's also evidence that they may confuse the bees that can't find their way back home. So as a general rule, Todd, would you say that you should only use insecticides when absolutely necessary from a bee-friendly perspective and try to talk? I think you can easily overdo it. For example, you see one insect out there, it's on your garage and you quick spray everything and it's dead, and you could have just taken a fly swatter and squashed it and been done. I think there's a lot of overkill with the pesticides, sure. I mean, there's time and place for them, and yeah, they're important in some cases, but if you don't have the problem, why treat for it? If there's nobody around that even has this type of whatever insect it would be or whatever concern it is, why treat for it if it doesn't make sense. If you have the problem and you follow the directions and take care of it, fine, but you don't need to do. Maybe it's just like, you know, you've got 30 little whatever right here, you spray right there and you're done. You don't have to do the rest of the yard, you know. We just have a couple of questions. Do you know about what the life expectancy of a bee is? It depends on who you talk to and also the queen, like a honeybee, I know more about those, I think, anyways, than the native bees that, you know, the queen bee. I've heard up to five years, but realistically, maybe a little bit less worker bees, a lot less, drones only over the summer, which are the male bees. That's pretty much in a nutshell. It's not exact. It's not. As far as, like, your wasp and such, my understanding is that there's, you know what, 80,000 whatever flying around. You get a good hard frost. The queen is the really intelligent one. She burrows it and hides until spring. Everything else dies, and she starts over. One produces thousands. As far as lifespan, theirs is one season, except for the queen can survive longer. As far as how long? I don't know. You know what that would-and-be nest that you showed? All those leaf-cutter bees? They were leaf-cutter bees. Correct. Yeah, very good eye. Yeah, very good. They're alfalfa leaf-cutter bees. Okay, and... They're a form of creature, too. Sometimes you'll get different types of leaf-cutter bees on your roses. They'll make a little C-shape on there or a half moon, and you quick want to spray for it. Usually the-what they've taken off is so small that it really is insignificant. It doesn't really harm the rose, but a lot of times people will spray for that. They'll kill them all, and now you have less. It was unnecessary, so... The queen in that box that you had a... You had a... I don't know. I don't know. That wasn't mine. That was Russ's box, so... You just put up the box and the bees find it, or do you have to... Yeah, if they... You know, we talked to them about it. He said to take, and it's brand new wood, take a propane torch and scorch the outside of it just a little bit, and kind of... They like that if you burn it a little bit, and they're more attracted to it than not. Something to think about. Yeah, it's fun to burn stuff. You know, if you're allergic to a honeybee, are you allergic to all bees? If you're allergic to a honeybee, you're allergic to all bees. I'd probably say not. The venom is, in my understanding, different with the different bees. When you get stung by a honeybee, it's almost like a heart-like muscle that pumps the poison into your system, and if you don't get that stinger and poison sac out, it'll pump that right into you. People say, oh, I'll just get it, and they grab it, and they squish it, and they basically pump it in faster. They squish the sac and pull it out. You use like a credit card, or a spoon, or a dull knife, or have somebody help you and just scrape it and flick it out versus grabbing it and squishing it in. Not as good. So as far as if the bends are all the same, my understanding is that they're not all the same. You have 128 different species. If they're all the same, that'd be unbelievable. I imagine they're probably all somewhat different as far as chemical. I don't know what. It won't take any chances. How about, I think, do wasps and hornets, are they pollinators? Yeah, I've heard that they can, yeah, do some pollinating. They're mainly a predator, though. They like to, well, for example, one life cycle that you might find with them is they'll find a spider, inject it and knock them out, basically, and they'll lay eggs inside of it. The eggs will hatch out inside of it. The spider will wake up, start walking around, and they'll eat and eat and eat until finally, the spider can't take it, and they burst out and they're ready to start over. Another one is they'll, once in a while, if you watch, if you just sit and watch and don't move, you'll see a little tiny wasp dragging a huge spider back into its little hole, and they'll drag it back in there, and they'll basically put in a coma, lay eggs around it, and they'll larvae hatch out, and they eat the spider alive, and then they start up again. So, they're a very interesting thing. They don't like, oh, let's have some honey from these guys. No, you don't get honey from them. They're more of a predator type of a creature. So, put in a hamburger in the fall and a bunch of fly on your hand. I almost guarantee there's no bees there. Bees don't like hamburgers. I don't know if they do, but I'd rather have some honey. Okay, that's it for our questions on bees, and before we call it quits for tonight, we can just open it up for a couple minutes here. Does anybody have any questions that weren't addressed? In any of our sessions, we can, Todd's a jack of all trades. He can help us answer any questions. If anybody has a last question that they want to ask? What's the general acreage of Absoraka? Absoraka, general acreage. Tell me if an 80 acres comes to mind, but I really don't know. I don't know. 50 acres. Is it 60? Yeah. The average is 37 acres, and the remaining acreage is 26 acres. The question with the size of Absoraka is over 60 acres. Any other questions out there? Todd, did you have a... One thing about going out to Absoraka, I've gone out there and you just can't see it all. It's almost as if you have to go more than once, and what I do is I kind of focus on maybe evergreens, or I'll focus on birch or whatever, and I find that enjoyable. You can try to go through it all, but it's almost like running. There's just so much out there, and so I would say that definitely worth a person's time more than once to go out there. And about the honeybees, are the introduced species out competing or native ones? Introduced species, you mean the honeybees? They've been around for a long time, over 100 years. I really don't know how long they've actually been here. I wouldn't say that they're out competing. No, I wouldn't think so at all. I want to go with honeybees. In a nutshell, what would you recommend? I want to have some more native bees in my landscape, Todd. What should I do? Well, more flowers. And if you only could plant one kind of flower, sunflowers seem to attract tons of bees if you go. Well, diversity, right? But if you could only do one, just do a sunflower. No, do a diversity, but if you have a chance and you get some really big creatures, a sunflower, a nice big yellow head, walk up to it and look, you'll probably find 10 or more different species of bees on there. And they're all getting along. Sometimes they'll push against each other to get the best whatever, but yeah, and everyone will have different, well, they won't all have different, but there'll be so many in a sunflower field you'll just be amazed. So if you have a good camera, that'd be good. But otherwise, all your native flowers, you know, wander out there and look, or just sit and wait and they'll come in. The honey bees are kind of lazy compared to the, like the bumble bees, they start later in the day, they don't like it when it's raining, they stay inside, so they just, there's a lot of jokes I could say, but we're being taped, so they're not. Because I usually put myself in trouble as far as what kind of worker I am. So milk leads a good one, especially for the monarchs. And that's another fascinating topic all together, just life cycle of a monarch. Wow. And then it's like, well, it's a weed, what's true? I don't really want to do it. I don't really clip off the pods. I mean, you know, if you really only want, you know, it's perennial. I'm going to plant a lot of different flowers, because they all have different bloom times. I always want a source of pollen for my bees. I want to minimize the use of insecticides, because insecticides are bee killers, right, in general. And especially stay away from any persistent insecticides. Maybe you put up a BNF box, it wouldn't hurt. So those are all, you do that, and you're on your way to having a healthier garden. Okay, last chance for any questions before we shut it down for tonight? Somebody want, Tom's home phone number? I have that. No, I don't. No, you don't want that. Oh.