Climate Farming and the Permanent Bee Pasture
By Shannie McCabe
The University of Georgia Honey Bee Program recommends improving bee nutrition and their population by creating permanent bee pastures that provide an unbroken succession of bloom.
This concept may seem incredibly elementary to us as we look at it from the bees perspective. Just like us humans, these busy pollinators need a consistent food supply in order to thrive! However, many conventional growers and other land stewards have disrupted the bloom season of our favorite pollinators through mechanized farming and landscaping.
In an effort to streamline and simplify food production and land development, the conventional farm has evolved into a homogenized and regimented model in order to fit scale-up demands and to conform to the needs of massive machinery. Through use of chemical pesticides and monocrop style farming, the diversity of plants both wild and domesticated has dwindled and our beloved pollinators are particularly affected by this shift from natural order to mechanized.
By way of example, consider the ubiquitous dandelion. This familiar, yellow flower blooms very early in the springtime, making it an essential forage for bees when many other blooms have not opened. But while the dandelion is essential to bees, an all out war has been waged against the dandelion in the name of the pristine grassy lawn.
Spanish Needles, or Bidens alba, occupies a similar space. This plant, widely regarded as a “weed,” is a rich source of nectar and pollen for a huge diversity of bees.
In Climate farming, high diversity of plants is encouraged and “weeds” are stewarded in a mindful way that considers their merit as pollinator forage. An essential element to encouraging longer bloom times is to establish more permanent plantings, including fruit trees, perennials and annuals. Climate Farming seeks to establish permanent, more self sustaining systems, and provide a wide range of bloom times for the pollinators.
Of course, you do not have to dive head first into regenerative agriculture in order to establish permanent forage sources. By simply eliminating your use of herbicides and planting a diversity of fruit trees, perennials and annuals in your garden or yard, you are helping to create more food for bees.
For those of you inclined to dive in head-first, be sure to follow this blog and our YouTube channel for tips on how to make your growing space serve the ecosystem as well as yourself.
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