Unexpected Common Milkweed Expansion

(Picture from Washington Post)

Monarch butterfly populations have been in steady decline since 2003 caused in part by loss of habitat. The director of the organization, Monarch Watch, created a recovery plan which includes the planting nationwide of thousands of milkweed, the primary host of monarchs. The organization has shipped over 30,000 milkweed plants, see blog article: http://monarchwatch.org/blog/)

Although, this is a very important issue to me, I never made the time over the winter to order milkweed to increase the numbers we already have.

This spring, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the mowing of our upper meadow after 3 years stimulated the small patch of Common Milkweed, that had already been growing in our meadow. Common Milkweed is the most prolific of the 12 native milkweeds in PA and is also know as Asclepias syriaca.

Our Milkweed have expanded to several patches and now includes roughly 1000 healthy individual plants.

Here is a simple map showing the location and expansion of the Milkweed in the upper meadow, which covers about 2 acres. The lower meadow is largely wetlands and has very little Milkweed.

Milkweed spread via seeds carried by the wind, birds or animals or by rhizomes underground. The mowing probably exposed fertile ground for the seeds and stimulated the rhizomes.

Milkweeds' milky sap contain poisonous glycosides, which the monarchs feed upon and can tolerate and in turn gives it the protection it needs from predators. Milkweeds' nectar and pollen are free of these poisons and provide food for numerous bees, butterflies and other insects.

It's well after May, and I have not spotted any monarchs coming through still. 

Here is a map of the first adult sightings for North America through June 20th:

http://www.learner.org/jnorth/maps/monarch_spring2014.html

The milkweed are blooming, mature and ready. Hopefully, the monarchs will show up soon.

National Pollinator Week 2014: How YOU can help!

The US Senate, 8 years ago, designated this week, June 16-22, as National Pollinator Week to bring public awareness to the decline of pollinators.

Last year, in Wilsonville, Oregon, when 50 blooming Linden trees were sprayed with a systemic neonicotinoid insecticide, over 50,000 bumble bees died immediately while feeding on the contaminated nectar and pollen.

(Photo from: http://www.thebritishgardener.com)

The trees were immediately wrapped so other bees and other pollinators would not be subjected to the contaminated nectar and pollen. Because of this incident, many neonicotinoids insecticides have been banned.

(Photo from: https://ferrellgummit.wordpress.com)

Neonicotinoid pesticides/insecticides are used by farmers, gardeners and homeowners and include products from Ortho and Bayer and others. They are systemic, meaning they are absorbed by the plant, including the pollen and nectar.  Bees, butterflies and other pollinators die when they come in contact with these residues.

You can help by NOT using these products OR follow labeled directions carefully, if you must use them. There are many of these products, just a couple are pictured below. See website link below for a more complete list.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Don't use pesticides/insecticides or herbicides when plants are blooming or when pollinators are active, during daylight hours.

The Xerces Society provides a list of these products and further information and excellent articles:
http://www.xerces.org/wings-magazine/neonicotinoids-in-your-garden/
http://www.xerces.org/neonicotinoids-and-bees/

Please help save 

our pollinators, our bees and butterflies and moths 

and other important pollinators 

and spread the word.

Bumblebees galore!

This year we seem to have a lot more bumblebees than honeybees in the garden. I have even observed bumblebees bullying honeybees from a flower. I decided to investigate further about them:

*They remove nectar using their long tongue called a glossa and store it in their crop or they will bite directly into the corolla called nectar robbing.

*Some species will leave a scent to mark that the flower has been visited – I wonder if honeybees do the same and if they can also can detect the scent left by the bumblebee.

*Once they have collected the nectar, they return to the nest and deposit it into brood cells made of wax but do not process it as honeybees so it is diluted and watery. It can only be stored for a few days unlike honey which can last indefinitely.

From this amazing site(www.bumblebee.org), here is some very interesting information regarding honeystomachs:

“Bumblebees gather nectar into their honeystomachs to transport it back to the nest. The honeystomach is located in the abdomen, and it is just a cuticle-lined bag with a long neck located at the mouthparts. It holds 0.06 - 0.20 ml, depending on the size of bumblebee, and when full can take up as much as 95% of the abdominal space and hold 90% of the body weight.

During foraging the bee needs energy, so she will consume some of the contents of the honeystomach. To allow her to do this there is a small valve at the end which can allow some of the nectar to pass into the bee's own digestive system. It has been estimated that a full honeystomach will give a bumblebee about 40 minutes of flying time.

Some flowers contain as little as 0.001 ml of nectar, so to fill her honeystomach the bumblebee may have to suck nectar from 60 flowers, and to find these 60 she may have to visit 100 or more. Then she will return to the nest, which may be as much as two miles away. So providing a supply of nectar for her nestmates would not be possible without the honeystomach to carry it in. A teaspoon holds about 5 ml and nectar is about half water, so to fill a teaspoon of honey a small bumblebee might need to make over 80 foraging trips, flying up to 320 miles, and sucking 80 000 flowers! Honeybees also have a honeystomach, and as they are smaller than bumblebees they would have to make even more foraging trips. Think of that next time you spread honey on your toast!”