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Knotty but nice for bees

Okay, we all know that Japanese knotweed is an invasive species, prone to tearing up your driveway, cracking your foundation, and choking rivers and streams. But what’s the best thing about knotweed? That’s easy: it’s in bloom. Right now. Right at this very moment when no other plant is even thinking about it.

Japanese knotweed, Fallopia japonica (formerly Polygonum cuspidatum), is an herbaceous perennial in the buckwheat family, Polygonaceae. Many people think it is some kind of bamboo because of its hollow stems and raised stem nodes, but it has no relation to true bamboo, which is actually a grass.

The World Conservation Union lists Japanese knotweed among the top 100 worst invasive plants. But if you can look past that detail, it is actually a pretty plant with large spade-shaped leaves and showy cream-colored flowers. The plants may grow 5-8 feet tall in a dense, bush-like display.

At this time of year in western Washington, you can hear these bushes before you see them. They are alive with pollinators and are particularly attractive to honey bees. Many beekeepers manage to harvest a monofloral honey from the vast stands found locally. And if you don’t harvest, it makes a great late-summer boost to a colony’s winter pantry.

The honey is dark and flavorful, and many people compare it to a mild form of buckwheat honey. I’ve tried it and, personally, I don’t taste a resemblance. Still, it is good and definitely worth a try—you can often find it sold as “bamboo honey,” especially on the east coast. The sample I had crystallized quickly at a rate similar to buckwheat honey.

Bee lovers have found another use for Japanese knotweed. The hollow stems are often cut into lengths and bundled for use as native bee habitat. The stem diameters vary just enough to provide suitable housing for a wide range of tunnel-nesting bees, including mason bees and leafcutters.

The pictures below were taken in Kirkland, Washington yesterday afternoon. The owner of this invasive marvel says, “Standing next to the knotweed almost sounded like you were standing next to a hive.” She also said, “I hear knotweed is invasive and hard to get rid of. My side yard looks like I’m growing knotweed as a crop. Neighbors have the same.”

Yup, sounds like knotweed. After it conquers the yard it will conquer the house. Once the flowers die back, she should cut up the stems for native bees and get rid of the rest.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

The honey bees are having a fine time in this residential crop of knotweed.
The honey bees are having a fine time in this residential crop of knotweed.
A honey bee and a fly share a late-afternoon sugar fix.
A honey bee and a fly share a late-afternoon sugar fix.

Pollinator walls, bee towers, and insect hotels

It seems that everyone is building for the bees these days, from private citizens, to transportation departments, to architectural design firms. The proliferation of bug structures, no matter how humble or how grand, indicates that humans are finally getting it: insects need a place to live too. As we cover more and more of the earth’s surface with buildings, roads, airports, and crops, it becomes vitally important to provide living quarters for the insects that serve us.

The structures are as varied as the insects that inhabit them. They may be smaller than a birdhouse or may cover the side of two-story building. They may be designed to attract bees, potter wasps, other pollinating insects, or even vertebrate pollinators like hummingbirds and bats. Some offer housing to non-pollinating beneficial insects such as ladybugs and lacewings. The options are endless and the designs are original and creative.

Germany seems to be the leader in bug structures, followed closely by Great Britain. Because those countries are small compared to places like Canada, the United States, and Australia, they were quick to realize the importance of coexisting with the beneficial insects and the need to provide shelter for them in the built environment. The insects use the habitat for shelter, safety, nesting, raising young, and finding food.

A feature that distinguishes walls, towers, and hotels from structures like mason bee condos or bumble bee nests is the wide variety of nesting choices. Pollinator walls may contain hollow reeds, wood with pre-drilled tunnels, cracked or drilled masonry, straw bundles, rolled corrugated board, clustered stones, or dry leaves. The “invertebrate habitat” shown below was built by the Cheshire Wildlife Trust. It contains many types of habitat and was built completely from recycled materials.

Invertebrate Habitat by Cheshire Wildlife Trust
Invertebrate Habitat by Cheshire Wildlife Trust

The next photo shows the winner of the 2010 Beyond the Hive Competition in London. This “bug hotel” was built by Arup Associates and is designed to encourage many types of invertebrate inhabitants.

Insect hotel by Arup Associates.
Insect hotel by Arup Associates.

If you decide to build your own habitat, here are some important issues:

  • The structure should be in an area sheltered from bright sun and high wind, such as close to a building or under a shady tree. If you hope to attract some native bees, at least past of the structure should be in the sun.
  • Insects need water, so a reliable supply such as a pond or creek should be nearby. Alternatively, you can provide an artificial source–just don’t let it run dry.
  • Many solitary bees and wasps need a source of mud.
  • The fill material should be varied in type (stones, masonry, dead leaves, reeds, wood, twigs) and have many little cracks and crannies, nooks and crevices.
  • The design must be structurally sound so it doesn’t topple from wind, rain, or snow. If you live in an earthquake zone, keep the structure low and wide instead of tall and narrow.

Structures don’t have to be large. The one shown below is small enough to become part of the garden. This was an entry in the Beyond the Hive competition by Helaba Landesbank Hessen-Thueringen.

Small but effective.
Small but effective.

The possibilities for building insect habitat are endless and can satisfy the artist in you. So give it a try. If you like, send me a photo and I’ll post it here on my site.

Pollinator housing attached to a building. Photo by Wildbienen.
Pollinator housing attached to a building. Photo by Wildbienen.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Occupy the barren landscape

When we think of bee forage, we usually think of vegetable plots, row crops, orchards, hedgerows, flower gardens, and meadows. But some of the best bee forage in the world comes in the form of trees—not only fruit trees—but trees like maple, chestnut, willow, basswood, locust, and alder. Some species provide only pollen, some only nectar, and some both, but in any case they are important food supplies for both honey bees and wild bees.

Unfortunately, treed areas are becoming scarce. In the southeastern United States, coal mining operations flatten mountains in order to extract the coal. Mountaintop removal, as the practice is called, leaves bees with nothing to eat for acres in all directions. Local trees such as sourwood and tulip poplar, along with native shrubs and perennial flowering plants, are typically replaced with non-native grasses that do nothing for bees.

Here in western Washington, our Department of Natural Resources routinely sprays new plantings of Douglas-fir with herbicides designed the kill the maple, alder, elderberry, bitter cherry, and cascara that normally appear in newly logged areas. The purpose, of course, is to give the “economically important” species a head start. But it seems short-sighted. Instead of a healthy recovery with multiple species in a complex habitat, you get the same type of monocrop seen in agricultural areas—with similar problems.

As I hike the state forests, I’m amazed and distraught at the number of warning signs posted by the DNR which list the panoply of herbicides that will be (or were recently) sprayed. Not only do I think it’s an unnecessary and questionable practice, but I wonder that any state so deeply in debt can afford to purchase and apply all those expensive chemicals. Surely there’s a better use for public money than poisoning the land while making the rich corporations even richer.

We beekeepers need to spend less time blaming each other for trivia (you should/shouldn’t feed sugar, you should/shouldn’t stop swarming, you should/shouldn’t provide ventilation) and go after some of the serious problems we have as a nation. We need to occupy the stripped mountains, the clear cuts, and the monocrops until we make our voices heard.

Rusty

HoneyBeeSuite.com

Mountaintop removal = bee removal. Photo by Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.
Mountaintop removal = bee removal. Photo by Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.

How to attract bees to your garden

Here are eight simple ways to attract more bees—both native bees and honey bees—to your garden.

  • Plant species that bloom in sequence. Just like any animal, bees need a constant supply of food. A garden containing blossoms throughout spring, winter, and fall will attract the greatest number of bees.
  • Plant in clumps. It is easier to attract bees to a group of flowers than to a single flower. Each bee likes to collect pollen and/or nectar from many flowers of the same type.
  • To attract a diversity of bees, plant species of many shapes and colors. Some bees—such as honey bees—don’t see much on the red end of the spectrum, so go heavier on the blues, whites, and yellows.
  • Avoid highly inbred flowers. Clues to inbreeding include variegated flowers, flowers of unusual color, great size, long blooming period, or flowers known as “doubles” or “triples” with multiple sets of petals. In an effort to get particular effects, plant breeders often sacrifice the quality of nectar and pollen.
  • Leave bare patches of earth. Many bees live beneath the ground or use mud for building. Mud not covered with mulch is essential.
  • Maintain a “wild space” somewhere near your garden where grasses and weeds are allowed to grow to full height and remain undisturbed all winter long. Such an area provides habitat, nesting material, and shelter to wild bees.
  • Provide a water source. All living things need water, and bees are no exception.
  • Forget the pesticides and buy yourself a hoe. It’s better for them and better for you.
Crocus
Crocus

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Apiforestation: Reclaiming coal mines for the bees

If you’ve done much “bee reading” in the past few years, you’ve probably come across a fascinating history by Tammy Horn entitled Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation, which was published by the University Press of Kentucky in 2005. The book was a great success that helped launch Horn’s next project.

That project is a joint effort among several groups, including The Lost Mountain Honey Project in Perry County, the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative, and the Eastern Kentucky Environmental Research Institute to encourage beekeeping in rural Kentucky.

The project leaders advocate the planting of bee-friendly, pollen- and nectar-rich trees on land that has been deforested by strip mines. The idea is to encourage a sustainable forest industry while, at the same time, providing a “honey corridor” with species—trees, shrubs, and wildflowers—that support honey bees. In the past, the understory was ignored in favor of high-value trees, but Horn has convinced the project leaders that the understory is critical to biodiversity, honey bee health, and the economy.

Before the introduction of parasitic mites in the 1980s, bees in this area of the south thrived on abundant forests of black locust, sourwood, chestnut, tulip popular, and wildflowers. But the bee populations never recovered and the beekeepers who sold honey, candles, and soap at roadside stands virtually disappeared. By replanting strip mines with nectar-rich trees, supplementing the area with native wildflowers, and breeding queens that are suitable for the local environment, the group hopes to re-establish beekeeping as a local way of life.

On her website, http://www.tammyhorn.com, Horn notes that pollination was not an important part of Kentucky agriculture while it was largely engaged in the production of tobacco–simply because tobacco is not a bee-pollinated plant. But now that local agriculture is becoming more diverse, bee pollination will be of greater importance to the local economy.

In addition to honey bees, this project will  be a boon to native bees and other wild pollinators as well.

Rusty

Apiforestation is bringing back local honey. Flickr photo by moonlightbulb/Selena N.B.H.
Apiforestation is bringing back local honey. Flickr photo by moonlightbulb/Selena N.B.H.