Survival of the pollinators

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This article was published 23/05/2017 (3087 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As a seasonal crew leader at the Assiniboine Park Conservancy, Rhonda Halliday doesn’t just make the park beautiful. She creates habitats for some of its smallest and important residents: its pollinators.

Bees are arguably the most high-profile pollinators — the rock stars, if you will. They are also threatened. For the past decade or so, scientists and researchers have worked to pin down the causes of declining bee populations worldwide, pointing to factors such as loss of plant diversity due to monoculture (large areas dedicated to single crops), transmission of parasites and diseases, and the use of neonicotinoid pesticides.

It’s a worrisome trend. Bees play a critical role in global food production. Without bees and other insect pollinators, many plants we rely on would not be able to reproduce. Our diets would not only lack key nutrients, they’d be bland.

While many of the world’s most essential food crops, such as corn, wheat, oats and rice, are wind-pollinated, fruit, vegetables, nuts and herb crops depend on insect pollination, as do many forage crops to be eaten by livestock.

There are more than 20,000 species of bee. Managed honeybees — the domesticated kind that are kept by beekeepers in man-made hives — produce products such as honey and beeswax, and are also a valued commercial commodity for their pollination powers. Some important commercial crops rely solely on honeybees for pollination. Take almonds, for example. Eighty per cent of the world’s almonds are grown in California. An 800,000-acre crop of almonds requires 1.6 million colonies of bees for pollination.

But managed honeybees alone cannot pollinate the world’s crops. Wild bees and other insect pollinators are vital, and must be included in the conservation conversation. And, as Halliday points out, bees are not the only insect pollinator. “Wasps, regular flies, ants — any of those are actually considered pollinators,” she says. “It’s just that bees and butterflies tend to be more prolific at it, so those are the ones we really want to encourage.”

The promotion and protection of pollinators is top of mind for Halliday and informs her work in all of Assiniboine Park’s gardens, including the Shirley Richardson Butterfly Garden in the Assiniboine Park Zoo. The seasonal exhibit opened on the long weekend, and the butterflies will be introduced in late June. Conservation efforts have focused on the monarch butterfly which, like bees, is a declining species. “We have become a monarch way station, which means we have enough perennials and natural growing areas around the Shirley Richardson Butterfly Garden to actually attract monarchs on their migration,” Halliday says. 

The zoo is also home to an urban beehive. Last year, the conservancy partnered with Chris and Lindsay Kirouac, the husband-and-wife team behind Beeproject Apiaries, arguably Manitoba’s most buzzed-about beekeepers and urban beekeeping advocates.

Beeproject Apiaries installed the hive last year, and honey produced at the zoo is used in the park’s restaurants. “The honey was beautiful, and we produced more than we were anticipating,” Chris says of last year’s harvest. Beeproject Apiaries also ran educational sessions and events, including a tasting focused on honey and cheese pairings and an extraction workshop. 

The hive at the zoo is one of several urban hives Beeproject Apiaries has tucked around Winnipeg, mostly on downtown rooftops. “Honey bees do extremely well in the city,” Chris says. “With the diversity of flowers that we have, and the fact that we’re not spraying the flowers with pesticides like you might in the country.”

That diversity can actually be tasted in the honey. “Different neighbourhoods have different dominant flowers,” Chris explains. “The nectar has a unique flavour and colour that comes through in the honey. We get really unique flavours from neigbourhood to neighbourhood. It’s another way to pull people into the magic of the honeybee and the urban hive project.”  

A public hearing about changing zoning rules to allow beekeeping in Winnipeg, including all residential areas, is slated for this fall, but that doesn’t mean everyone should take up beekeeping in order to save the bees.

“When people hear that the pollinators are being threatened, and think ‘what can I do to help?’, they automatically think they have to get a beehive,” Lindsay says. “But when people don’t know what to do, and how to keep their hives in a healthy and sustainable way, they might be doing more harm than good.”

Planting bee-friendly flowers in your garden is an easy way to help keep wild bees and other pollinators. Halliday recommends planting annuals such as sunflowers, alyssum, cosmos, calendula and zinnia, or perennials such as hyssop, goldenrod and daylily. Herbs such as lavender, rosemary, sage, thyme will also attract pollinators. “We recommend that people reach for non-treated seeds or organic plants,” Chris says. 

If you’re planting milkweed to attract monarchs, Halliday says to give it time. “Milkweed comes back every year, and the monarchs will find it.” 

Halliday recommends providing pollinators a bit of shelter. “Pollinators don’t do well where there’s lots of wind and they have trouble landing,” she says. As well, most of them benefit from having access to water. “Not necessarily as big as, say, a bird bath, but butterflies and bees like having a shallow stone that you just put a little bit of water on each morning. They call it puddling, and butterflies will actually take some of nutrients leaching out of the stone along with the water.”

Using fewer — or zero — chemicals in your garden will also help protect the pollinators you’ve attracted. Lindsay points out that while no one likes mosquitoes, fogging harms wild pollinators. For its part, the Assiniboine Park Conservancy doesn’t do any pest control. Mosquito larviciding in Assiniboine Park is handled by the City of Winnipeg, and there is a fogging buffer zone around the Zoo.

Introducing ladybugs into your garden is one natural method to curb pests. “They will eat a lot of the harmful aphids,” Halliday says. A simple solution of Ivory soap and water will also help control aphids and detrimental spiders. “Rather than thinking about eradication, think about control,” she says. “We’re always going to have pests, just like we’re always going to have weeds.”

Our appetite for perfect green lawns is bad for bees, anyway. Lindsay encourages folks to leave their dandelions. 

“They’re the first food source for bees in the spring,” she says. “Let’s leave a few for them for bees to gorge on.”

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti