Sustainably Speaking: Honeybees and springtime pollination and swarming
GREEN BAY, Wis. (WFRV)-Honeybees, like many of our springtime pollinators, play an important role in allowing our fresh, local food to thrive year in and year out. However, this time of year is also when honeybees tend to swarm.
The Brown County Beekeepers Association is a club committed to preventing swarming by engaging in correct practices. Dave Elsen, who serves as the club’s education chair, shares more about how they do this.
“We teach people sustainability and responsibility and being a responsible bee keeper means we don’t want our bees swarm because if our bees swarm they end up in your garage, in your trees or in your yards, which sometimes causes a lot of issues in the community,” says Elsen.”So we teach our members to split their hives in the spring when they are a thriving hive .”
Bees swarm, especially in the springtime months, as a means to repopulate after winter dieback. A queen bee can lay over a thousand eggs a day, says Elsen, and at that rate, will cause hives to get too large. Once that happens, nearly half of the bees fly away to a new location, which could be at a home, park, or baseball diamond.
Teaching beekeepers to split their hives once they become thriving is a way to keep the bees from leaving and swarming. In addition to sustainable practices of splitting hives, the club is also committed to keeping a steady population of these important pollinators.
The term ‘No Mow May’ has fallen out of popularity recently due to recent scientific studies revealing this is not as beneficial as it once was believed to be. The term ‘Slow Mow May’ has replaced that, says Wayne Steigelman, the Social Media and Technology Chairperson for the club. He says to help these pollinators thrive, there’s more to it than not slowly cutting your grass in the Spring.
“In your yard for landscaping, try to use wood chips a little bit more than rocks. When they rot, they add health to the soil, and we know that when the soil is healthy, plants will grow that will feed the bees. Plant native plants. plant decorative plants that are fruiting like flowering crabs.
Steigelman says it’s important to plant native plants because our local insects have grown accustomed to them and have special enzymes that make digesting that food easier. If you do end up cutting your grass, Steigelman offers this advice also.
“One thing you can do too is try not bag your grass, let the grass clippings spread out dry because that keeps cover on the soil, keeps the soil cool, it feeds the soil, feeds your grass, you don’t have to use fertilizer, and again healthy soil the microbes are going to break, turn it into nutrients to grow healthy plants, pollinators are going to come down and feed on those plants and guess what we get good tasting food from all of this.”
Finally, if you do happen to notice a swarm of honeybees, Elsen offers up these important reminders.
“The first thing to do is not panic. Don’t spray them. A lot of people go and panic, and then they spray them, and then they call us. Well, then they are pretty much unsalvageable. We have swarm catching…and someone in our team goes out, and we’ll get the swarm.”
The Brown County Beekeepers Association also asks the public to send them a photo of the swam before they come out to your residence. They can only contain honeybees and bumblebees.
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