- Author: Anne Schellman
Mark your calendar for Tuesday, November 28, 2023! Giving Tuesday is an opportunity for you to make a donation to a program that has made a difference in your life.
We invite you to support us in our quest to promote healthier gardens, people, and more sustainable landscapes.
Here are some photos of our UC Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners in action helping make Stanislaus County a better place.
- Author: Ben Faber
Ventura County Resource Conservation District Project Updates
Grant programs and community support allows Ventura County Resource Conservation District (VCRCD) to provide Ventura County farms, ranches, and nurseries financial assistance for conservation project implementation, technical services, and conservation education. For over 30 years VCRCD has helped local farmers improve their irrigation efficiency, water conservation, and soil health. In recent years VCRCD has expanded its capacity to implement native habitat restoration and wildfire fuel management.
Two active CDFA grants we want to highlight are the CA Underserved & Small Producers (CUSP) Drought Relief funds and the Pollinator Habitat Program (PHP) implementation funds. Through CUSP, VCRCD can reimburse agricultural and working lands impacted by drought since 2021. Up to $20,000 can be reimbursed for approved drought-related practices or verified expenses.
The PHP grant, which is a partnership between Cachuma RCD, Community Environmental Council (CEC), Santa Barbara Botanical Garden (SBBG), and VCRCD, provides up to $200,000 to implement pollinator-beneficial practices on agricultural landscapes, for example, alley cropping, cover crops, field borders, hedgerow planting, riparian herbaceous cover, wildlife habitat planting, and more!
Finally, we expect CDFA to finalize the selection of Block Grant Recipients for both their Healthy Soils Program (HSP) and their State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP) this month. VCRCD applied for funding to provide technical assistance to HSP and SWEEP applicants so, if you're interested in applying, sign up to our newsletter (https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/KJXfAN1/newsletter) for updates.
For information about VCRCD's other agricultural projects, please check out our website: www.vcrcd.org or contact Emily Nye, Agricultural & Environmental Sustainability Specialist, at emily.nye@vcrcd.org or 805-764-5155.
For those growers in San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and San Diego County's, please reach out to Coastal San Luis RCD (https://www.coastalrcd.org/), Upper Salinas-Las Tablas RCD (https://www.us-ltrcd.org/), Cachuma RCD ( https://www.rcdsantabarbara.org/), and Greater San Diego County RCD (https://www.rcdsandiego.org/) to learn more about their programs.
- Author: Denise Godbout-Avant
Pollinators that hang around our gardens include bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, beetles, and flies. While all these pollinators are important, bees make up about 50% of pollinators.
Native Bees Prominent Role
When you see bees in your garden, you likely see many European honeybees (Apis mellifera), who are crucially important to the Central Valley's agriculture since Honeybees pollinate 90% of the almond crop. But Honeybees are not the only bees in search of nectar in farmers' fields and our gardens. There over 4,000 species of native bees in the United States, with about 1,600 in California.
Native bees play an important role in pollinating our plants since they are 200 times more efficient at pollination than Honeybees. Studies in the Central Valley have shown three dozen or so native bee species provide sufficient pollination services for a single farm. For example, pollinating an acre of apples requires 60,000-120,000 Honeybees; the same area can be pollinated by 250-750 Mason bees (Megachile).
Social Characteristics and Nesting Habits
Most bees are solitary in nature, generally producing honey only for their own consumption and/or for their young. Nesting habits vary from social hives/colonies to solitary nesting in the ground or woody material.
- Social vs. Solitary bees:
o Solitary bees make up 99% of all bees in North America, with social bees making up less than 1%. Only Honeybees and Bumblebees are social, living in colonies, with all other bees being solitary. Most Honeybees are domesticated, living in hives. Bumblebees live in the wild, in colonies which are generally underground. Honeybee hives will have a population of 10,000-50,000 bees, while Bumblebees will have only 50-400 in their colonies.
- Ground nesting bees make up 70% of bees:
o Mining bees and Digger bees (Adrena): As their names indicate, these bees have a ground-nesting lifestyle. From the outside, the tunnels look like holes with a ring of loose soil around them and can be mistaken for small ant hills or earthworm mounds. Mining bees are active only in the spring for 4-8 weeks during which the females dig tunnels to lay their eggs and raise their young. Both bees are extremely docile, rarely stinging.
- Stem and wood nesting bees make up 30% of bees:
o Leafcutter bees (Megachilidae) use a “wrapper” of leaves, resin, and sand to build their nests in natural or artificial cavities. If you see some leaves in your garden with their distinctive circular “cut out,” you will know you have some in your area. They are about the same size as honeybees, but their bodies are black and furry while Honeybees are dark brown to black and yellow striped.
o Mason beesconstruct their nests from mud, preferring hollow stems or holes made by wood-boring insects. Some people hang bee “houses” with hollow tubes to attract these bees to nest in their yard.
Generalist vs. Specialist Bees
Some bees are generalists, getting their nectar from a wide variety of flowers. These include the Bumblebee and the Mason bee.
Other bees are specialists, feeding only from very specific flowers, such as the Squash bee (two genera: Peponapis and Xenoglossa) or the Sunflower bee (Megachile) with their common names indicating which type of flowers they favor.
Other Native Bees
Other bees you may see in your garden:
- Carpenter bees (Apidae): Females are shiny black and can sting, but only if provoked. Males are golden and can't sting. Their name derives from their nesting behavior; nearly all species burrow into hard plant material such as dead wood or bamboo. Occasionally they may nest in unpainted wood siding of buildings.
- Sweat bees (Halictidae): Sweat bees' common name is due to their tendency to land on and lick the sweat from people's skin! One of the coolest looking bees in this group is the green sweat bee, which has a shiny, iridescent exoskeleton. Most of these bees nest in the ground, though some nest in wood. Some species are cleptoparasites, meaning they will lay their eggs on food in another species' nest and after hatching, the larva kills the host's larva!
- Long-horned bees (Melissodes): With medium to large bodies, this non-aggressive group gets their names from the long antennae of the males, which females lack. Females have a solitary nest in the ground whereas males sleep outside, often spending the night in groups on the surface of a flower.
Bees are in Trouble
Some ways you can help:
- Plant a garden full of flowering plants to attract bees and other pollinators. Make sure you have something blooming during each of the spring, summer, and fall seasons. Whenever possible, plant native plants since native bees and plants evolved together.
- If you use a pesticide, choose one that is less toxic such as a horticultural soap or oil and spray in early morning or evening when pollinators are unlikely to be present. (https://ipm.ucanr.edu/GENERAL/pesticides_urban.html)
- Provide spaces for nesting bees, with bee houses and bare patches of soil, along with a source of water.
By providing a bee-friendly garden, you can help the vital native bee pollinators thrive.
Denise Godbout-Avant has been a UCCE Master Gardener with Stanislaus County since 2020
/h3>/h3>/h3>/h3>/h3>Hope to see you at one of these events happening this weekend, Saturday, March 18, 2023.
Modesto Farmers Market
Turlock Community Gardens Workshop-Plant Swap-Potluck Palooza
Turlock Community Gardens invites you to stop in for a visit or for the day, activities for all ages are happening.
UCCE Master Gardener Composting Basics Workshop 9:00am-10:30am
Learn about how to compost at home! Reduce your carbon footprint & recycle kitchen/garden scraps. This workshop is a great opportunity to hear from an expert and ask questions, plus one lucky person is going home with their own compost bin!
11:00am-11:30am
Let's share cuttings, rooted plants, extra gardening supplies, seeds and any tips and tricks to help out our fellow plant enthusiasts! We will be doing a round robin with wristbands. If you don't have anything to bring, you are still welcome to take items home. There is always more than enough to share, especially extra perlite!
Rock Painting Station
11:30am
Decorate a rock to take home or gift to the garden. Paint, brushes, and rocks will be provided, but you are welcome to bring your own.
Turlock Community Potluck
12:00pm-2:00pm
Bring your favorite dish or just bring yourself! Enjoy a slice of pizza while exchanging tips/tricks. It's a great way to meet neighbors, network and have some fun.
As a reminder, TCG asks children to be always supervised and for everyone to be mindful not to disturb the garden beds. They are lovingly maintained by different families and groups.
Be sure to check out the Free Garden Items & Seed Exchange Cabinet and Free Little Library. (Take what you need, give what you can.)
Turlock Community Gardens and parking are located behind the Cornerstone Covenant Church (4501 Crowell Road) and the nonprofit, Jessica's House. If you have any questions about the Turlock Community Gardens event, email info@turlockcommunitygardens.org
- Author: Christine Casey
- Author: Lea Corkidi
Regular Haven visitors notice that we frequently change our planting. It's one of the joys of gardening -- there are always new plants to try and experiment with. At the Haven, research on new plants and methods for bee gardens is essential to our educational mission.
Previous posts have reported on our work with bee plant preferences, with an emphasis on low-water plants. Our colleagues at UC Cooperative Extension in Southern California have done similar work for that part of the state. Previous blog posts have covered research with mulch, plant color, and water; all are important components of a healthy bee garden.
But all this is for naught if it isn't put into practice. So our current work is to create tools for the California horticulture industry to educate employees and customers about bee garden best practices based on this research. The first step in this work is development of an efficient sampling method so growers, landscapers, and public gardens can easily assess the bee-attractiveness of new plants as they come on the market. This will allow these plants to be marketed correctly, and will also help growers to target bee-friendly pest management.
In our attractiveness studies the Southern CA team used timed counts, while the Northern CA team used a snapshot count method (1). This technique consists of 20 second quick counts of every plant that is repeated three times in succession rather than a single 3-minute timed count. The snapshot count is faster to complete and more readily worked into the day of an otherwise busy nursery employee.
The purpose of this study was to calculate the relative net precision (RNP) of each bee counting method at a wholesale nursery (Fallbrook, CA) and a public garden site (Encinitas, CA) in San Diego County. RNP is calculated as shown below and is a way to assess sampling efficiency by balancing precision and sampling cost (2).
RNP = [1/(cost x Rv)] x 100, where Rv = (SE/mean) x 100
Plants in full bloom were sampled weekly for at least 4 weeks using both methods. Bees were counted as honey bees or other bees as this distinction is easy for an untrained observer; only honey bee data is reported here. At both locations, we saw a larger absolute number of bees with the snapshot method, but the trend of most attractive to least attractive was the same for both methods (Figures 1 and 2). We are most interested in this trend rather than the absolute number, which is expected to vary between locations. Additionally, regression analysis shows that the two counting methods are strongly correlated (Figure 3).
Finally, we saw differences between the RNP values calculated for the two sampling methods, with higher RNP for the snapshot method at both locations (Table 1). Higher RNP means greater sampling efficiency (2).
A second year of study will begin in April at additional sites to confirm these findings. We look forward to providing the California green industry with a useful tool for supporting pollinator gardens.
References
1. Garbuzov and Ratnieks. 2014. Functional Ecology 28: 364-374.
2. Buntin pp 99-115 in Handbook of Sampling Methods for Arthropods in Agriculture. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. 1994.