- Author: Christine Casey
This Saturday, August 19, 2017, is National Honey Bee Day. This commemoration was created by Pennsylvania beekeepers to recognize the beekeeping industry, honey bees, and the role they play in our food supply. Let's take this opportunity to honor the hard-working honey bees (they pollinate about 85% of bee-pollinated crops in the US, which is worth billions of dollars annually).
To keep honey bees healthy, access to ample, nutritious forage, i.e. flowers, is essential. It's important to provide year-round bloom and to include both pollen and nectar sources. The Haven's web page includes the information you need to develop this in your own garden; click here to go to all of our gardening resources.
Winter-blooming plants:
The winter food garden also depends on honey bee pollination:
Early spring is when bees have a special need for pollen. This protein-rich plant component is fed to the young bees; an ample supply is important to building a strong colony. Early bloomers like ceanothus and California poppy are good pollen sources; March-blooming Spanish lavender provides a great nectar source that provides energy for spring foraging activity.
Late spring and into summer are when activity picks up in the bee garden. The hive is growing and there are bees to be fed! Here's a new bee entering the world, along with some of the pollen and nectar sources that will feed her:
The heat of late summer often leaves gardeners heading for the air-conditioning, but not our bees...here's some plants that love the heat:
Honey bees need access to water: they don't have AC like we do, but use water to cool the hive. Here's one way to provide a water source:
Fall bloomers are important to help honey bees put up enough honey to sustain the hive through the winter. Some good fall bloomers are shown here:
The result of all that hard work....cells being filled with honey, along with full frames of honey that have been capped by the bees for storage in the hive:
Thanks, bees, for your hard work!
- Author: Christine Casey
There are many California specialty crops that are harvested for their foliage; since we're not harvesting a fruit or vegetable folks don't often think of these as providing resources for bees. However even though we eat the foliage, these plants still need to flower and be pollinated so that seed for the next crop can be produced.
One of the healthiest of these specialty crops -- both for us and for bees -- is bok choy. Sometimes referred to as Chinese cabbage, it is in the mustard family (Brassicaceae) and goes by the scientific name Brassica rapa subsp. chinensis. California leads the US in production of Asian vegetables; boy choy is a cool-season crop that is grown along the Central Coast from Salinas to Santa Maria.
Fortunately for us, this superfood that is full of vitamins and antioxidants is easy to grow at home. Interestingly, recent research has shown that the antioxidant levels in bok choy leaves increase with stir-frying, which is the common method of cooking (Food Chemisty. 2016. 203:23-27 and International Journal of Food Properties. 2016. 19(11):2536-2549).
Plants are available at the garden center in late fall. Grow in full sun or light shade and provide plenty of water. If you don't have a garden, bok choy can easily be grown in a large container like a 5-gallon bucket. Here's one of our plants at the Haven about a month after planting.
The normal harvest recommendation is to cut off the entire plant at the base. To feed the bees, however, remove individual leaves as needed and leave the plant intact. So long as there is not a hard frost, it will go on to flower in January.
The process of leafy vegetables flowering is called "bolting" and is generally thought to make the plant inedible. But not to the bees! This is especially true in bok choy; the flower structure of this plant makes both pollen and nectar available to bees, which isn't the case for all mustards. At the Honey Bee Haven we plant several beds of various Brassicaeae for the sole purpose of letting them flower to feed our bees. Here's a honey bee on bok choy in late January.
- Author: Christine Casey
Welcome. This blog will provide updates and information on the project, "The ART of the Specialty Crops and Pollinator Connection", which is based at the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven located at UC Davis. Haven scientists Christine Casey and Elina Niño are leading the project; thanks go to the California Department of Food and Agriculture for funding.
ART = awareness, relevance, and training. California leads the nation in production of specialty crops; these crops depend on bee pollinators. Our first goal is to promote awareness and relevance of the specialty crop-pollinator connection to the public, including creating pollinator habitat in food gardens. We'll couple this with programs about growing and cooking food to reinforce the link between healthy bees, nutritious food, and healthy people.
Our second goal is to train other educators to expand our outreach. We're especially excited about establishing our "Bee Cam" that will allow live streaming of bee-flower interactions.
You can also follow us on Facebook to learn more about this project and its activities.