I recently attended a pollinator habitat management short course in East Lansing, MI. It was held at the Rose Lake Plant Materials Center, which is part of the NRCS Plant Materials Program (
http://plant-materials.nrcs.usda.gov/). At Rose Lake, plants are cultivated to solve conservation problems, including how to increase habitat for beneficial insects. Above is a trial of pollinator habitat that was just getting going this year.
While I was there I caught up with some old friends (Brett Blaauw, Julianna Tuell, Rufus Isaacs) who work with pollinator conservation and pollination ecology at Michigan State University (
http://www.isaacslab.ent.msu.edu/Home.html).
We drove to one of the biofuel sites that the Isaacs lab is studying so I could check out the bumblebee hives. Many growers and gardeners buy bumblebee hives like this to increase pollination of their crops (
http://www.koppert.com/pollination/). They are very easy to use, as they don't require maintenance like honey bee hives. You simply place a hive near your crops in the shade, and let them do their work! In the Fall, queens will emerge and overwinter alone, hopefully somewhere near your field. The rest of the bumblebees die in the winter, and you can remove the hive. This hive probably has about 200 bees inside. The lunch tray on top is a makeshift roof to protect the bees from rain and sun.
Here Brett is checking out some beneficial insect habitat that is further along. It's important for bees to have habitat to nest in and to forage in throughout the growing season. So it's always a good idea to have flowers blooming in your garden from early Spring into Fall. Be sure to keep up with Ben's posts for some info on how he's using floral strips in pumpkin.
I recently attended a pollinator habitat management short course in East Lansing, MI. It was held at the Rose Lake Plant Materials Center, which is part of the NRCS Plant Materials Program (http://plant-materials.nrcs.usda.gov/). At Rose Lake, plants are cultivated to solve conservation problems, including how to increase habitat for beneficial insects. Above is a trial of pollinator habitat that was just getting going this year.
While I was there I caught up with some old friends (Brett Blaauw, Julianna Tuell, Rufus Isaacs) who work with pollinator conservation and pollination ecology at Michigan State University (http://www.isaacslab.ent.msu.edu/Home.html).
We drove to one of the biofuel sites that the Isaacs lab is studying so I could check out the bumblebee hives. Many growers and gardeners buy bumblebee hives like this to increase pollination of their crops (http://www.koppert.com/pollination/). They are very easy to use, as they don't require maintenance like honey bee hives. You simply place a hive near your crops in the shade, and let them do their work! In the Fall, queens will emerge and overwinter alone, hopefully somewhere near your field. The rest of the bumblebees die in the winter, and you can remove the hive. This hive probably has about 200 bees inside. The lunch tray on top is a makeshift roof to protect the bees from rain and sun.
Here Brett is checking out some beneficial insect habitat that is further along. It's important for bees to have habitat to nest in and to forage in throughout the growing season. So it's always a good idea to have flowers blooming in your garden from early Spring into Fall. Be sure to keep up with Ben's posts for some info on how he's using floral strips in pumpkin.
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