Morning Ag Clips logo
  • Subscribe ❯
  • PORTAL ❯
  • LOGIN ❯
  • By Keyword
  • By topic
  • By state
  • Home
  • Events
  • Jobs
  • Store
  • Advertise
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Subscribe to our
    daily email
    ❯
  • Portal Registration❯
  • Login❯
  • policy
  • tractors & machinery
  • education
  • conservation
  • webinars
  • business
  • dairy
  • cattle
  • poultry
  • swine
  • corn
  • soybeans
  • organic
  • specialty crops
  • Alabama
  • Alaska
  • Arizona
  • Arkansas
  • California
  • Colorado
  • Connecticut
  • Delaware
  • Florida
  • Georgia
  • Hawaii
  • Idaho
  • Illinois
  • Indiana
  • Iowa
  • Kansas
  • Kentucky
  • Louisiana
  • Maine
  • Maryland
  • Massachusetts
  • Michigan
  • Minnesota
  • Mississippi
  • Missouri
  • Montana
  • Nebraska
  • Nevada
  • New Hampshire
  • New Jersey
  • New Mexico
  • New York
  • North Carolina
  • North Dakota
  • Ohio
  • Oklahoma
  • Oregon
  • Pennsylvania
  • Rhode Island
  • South Carolina
  • South Dakota
  • Tennessee
  • Texas
  • Utah
  • Vermont
  • Virginia
  • Washington
  • West Virginia
  • Wisconsin
  • Wyoming

Morning Ag Clips

  • By Keyword
  • By topic
  • By state
  • policy
  • tractors & machinery
  • education
  • conservation
  • webinars
  • business
  • dairy
  • cattle
  • poultry
  • swine
  • corn
  • soybeans
  • organic
  • specialty crops
  • Home
  • Events
  • Jobs
  • Store
  • Advertise
Home » In praise of messiness
gardening pollinators
THE BUZZ ...

In praise of messiness

Research indicates a neat, well-coiffed landscape is bad for bees and other pollinators

PUBLISHED ON September 26, 2017

With all due respect to honeybees, they are seldom required to produce fruits and vegetables. Please don’t spread this around, as I do not want to tarnish their public image. But the fact is that wild bees, along with other insects and the odd vertebrate here and there, do a bang-up job pollinating our crops, provided there are enough types of wild plants (i.e., messiness) around to keep them happy for the rest of the season. (NY State IPM Program at Cornell University, Flickr/Creative Commons)

KEMPTVILLE, N.Y. — On my twice-monthly drive on Highway 416 between Prescott and Ottawa, I pass the sign for Kemptville, a town of about 3,500 which lies roughly 40 km north of the St. Lawrence. It has a rich history, and no doubt is a fine place to live, but one of these days I need to stop there to verify that Kemptville is in fact a village of surpassing tidiness. (It’s Exit 34 in case anyone wants to take some field notes and get back to me.)

Most of us would prefer not to live in totally unkempt surroundings, but Western culture may have taken sanitation a bit too far. Claims that cleanliness is next to godliness have yet to be proven by science, but research does indicate a neat, well-coiffed landscape is bad for bees and other pollinators.

With all due respect to honeybees, they are seldom required to produce fruits and vegetables. Please don’t spread this around, as I do not want to tarnish their public image. But the fact is that wild bees, along with other insects and the odd vertebrate here and there, do a bang-up job pollinating our crops, provided there are enough types of wild plants (i.e., messiness) around to keep them happy for the rest of the season.

As landscapes become neater and less diverse, wild bees cannot find enough natural foods to keep them in the neighborhood for the few weeks of the year we’d like them to wallow around in our apple or cucumber flowers. In sterile, highly manipulated environments like almond groves and suburban tracts, honeybees are critical.

Dr. Scott McArt, a bee specialist at Cornell’s Dyce Laboratory for Bee Research, says there are an estimated 416 species of wild bees in New York State. When I estimate stuff, the numbers tend to be less exact, such as “more than three,” but I’ve met Dr. McArt, and I trust him on this count. Dr. McArt is quick to point out that wild critters take care of things just fine in most places. He has cataloged exactly 110 species of wild bees visiting apple blossoms in commercial orchards, and in the vast majority of NYS orchards studied, honeybees have no bearing on pollination rates. My object is not to malign honeybees, but to point out that if we learn to live with a bit more unkemptness, we will improve the health of wild bees, wildflowers, food crops, and ourselves in the process.

Messiness also takes pressure off managed honeybees, an increasingly fragile species, by providing them a rich source of wild, non-sprayed nectar and pollen. Orchardists do not spray insecticides when their crops are flowering because they know it will kill bees. But many fungicides, which are not intended to kill insects, are sprayed during bloom. One of the unexpected findings of research done through the Dyce Lab is that non-lethal sprays like fungicides are directly linked with the decline of both wild bees and honeybees. But banning a particular chemical is not a panacea—the situation is far more complex than that. What is needed to save bees of all stripes is a real change in mindset regarding landscape aesthetics.

Increasing the entropy on one’s property is as easy as falling off a log (which of course is a literal example of increased entropy). Pollinators need plants which bloom at all different times, grow at various heights, and have a multitude of flower shapes and structures. For greater abundance and diversity of wild flowering plants, all you need to do is stop. Stop constantly mowing everything. Choose some places to mow once a year in the late fall, and others where you will mow every second third year. Stop using herbicides, both the broadleaf kind and the non-selective type.

Before you know it, elderberry and raspberry will spring up. Woody plants like dogwoods and viburnums will start to appear. Coltsfoot and dandelions, essential early-season flowers, will come back. Asters and goldenrod (which by the way do not cause allergies), highly important late-season sources of nectar and pollen, will likewise return.

Wild grape, virgin’s bower, Virginia creeper and wild cucumber will ramble around, without any help whatsoever. However, you may choose to help this process along by sowing perennial or self-seeding wildflowers like purple coneflower, foxglove, bee balm, mint, or lupine. Even dandelion is worth planting. You’ll not only get more wild pollinators, you’ll also see more birds. Redstarts, tanagers, orioles, hummingbirds, catbirds, waxwings and more will be attracted to such glorious neglect. No feeders required.

I strongly advocate for more chaos in the plant department, even if the local Chamber of Commerce or Tourism Board frowns upon it. Remember, just because you’re an unkempt community doesn’t mean you have to change the name of your town.

–Cornell Cooperative Extension of St. Lawrence County

For more articles out of New York, click here.

RECOMMENDED ARTICLES

Study suggests one-third of wild bee species in Pa. have declined in abundance
August 30, 2022

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Over a six-year period in southcentral Pennsylvania, measures of biodiversity among wild bee communities declined and one-third of species experienced decreases in abundance, according to a Penn State-led team of researchers. Findings from their recently published study, the researchers contend, demonstrate the value of standardized, season-wide sampling across multiple years for […]

Beyond honey: 4 essential reads about bees
May 11, 2022

WASHINGTON — As spring gardening kicks into high gear, bees emerge from hibernation and start moving from flower to flower. These hardworking insects play an essential role pollinating plants, but they’re also interesting for many other reasons. Scientists study bees to learn about their intricate social networks, learning patterns and adaptive behaviors. These four stories […]

Planting mixes of flowers around farm fields helps keep bees healthy
April 06, 2022

SACRAMENTO — It’s springtime in California, and bees are emerging to feast on flowering fields – acres upon acres of cultivated almonds, oranges and other fruits and nuts that bloom all at once for just a few weeks. Farmers raise these lucrative crops in monoculture fields, each planted with neat, straight rows of a single […]

What’s the buzz?
May 18, 2021

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — More than one-quarter (28%) of North American bumble bees are facing some degree of extinction risk. This population decline is due to threats including habitat loss, use of pesticides, disease, and climate change. The bumble bee is just one of the many species of bees in decline around the country. The decline […]

10 ways UGA is helping honeybees
April 27, 2021

ATHENS, Ga. — University of Georgia faculty and students are working to better understand pollinators and the threats they face. Pollinating bees are vital to healthy crops and a thriving ecosystem, but are under threat of extinction from disease, pollution and other factors. Here are 10 ways UGA is working to help pollinators. 1. Teaching […]

Spread the word

Browse More Clips

Mohawk Valley 4-H Livestock Show & Sale

War on weeds takes toll on beneficial bacteria

Primary Sidebar

MORE

NEW YORK CLIPS

TYM USA and Branson Tractors merge to become TYM North America
January 26, 2023
4-H Presentation Day 101 Training
January 26, 2023
ASI elects new leadership at Annual Convention
January 26, 2023
U.S. Championship Cheese Contest features 2,249 entries
January 26, 2023
2023 Seed Swap
January 26, 2023
  • Trending
  • Latest

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE...

2023 Seed Swap
January 26, 2023
Dakota Gardener: Gabbing with the greenery
January 25, 2023
Learn, Grow, Eat and Go! presented Feb. 2 in Garland
January 25, 2023
2023 Mid-Atlantic Fruit and Vegetable Convention, Jan. 30
January 24, 2023
Where do bees go in the winter?
January 24, 2023

Footer

MORNING AG CLIPS

  • Contact Us
  • Sponsors
  • About Us
  • Advertise with Us
  • Privacy Statement
  • Terms of Service

CONNECT WITH US

  • Like Us on Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

TRACK YOUR TRADE

  • Markets & Economy
  • Cattle Updates
  • Dairy News
  • Policy & Politics
  • Corn Alerts

QUICK LINKS

  • Account
  • Portal Membership
  • Just Me, Kate
  • Farmhouse Communication

Get the MAC App Today!

Get it on Google Play
Download on the App Store

© 2023 Morning Ag Clips, LLC. All Rights Reserved.