Our neighbors probably do not appreciate our lawn quite as much as the bees do. Each spring the white clover and dandelions — two breakfast flowers for bees, in seasonal terms — bloom unrestrained in a friendly merger with the Kentucky bluegrass. Milkweeds crowd the juniper shrubs like an ungainly landscape design fail. I smile sheepishly as adjacent, our neighbor patrols his turf, liquidating the first hint of invaders with copious pumps of Roundup. The weedy interlopers, along with hyssop, echinacea and bergamot I’ve planted in the backyard, comprise my little bee buffet.
Admittedly, we can feel anxious and unneighborly about our weed-friendly lawn. The social expectations for a green glade and disdain for stingers run strong. Even our 10-year-old, cool as a cucumber in our yard, pantomimes terror amidst his friends should a beneficial insect stray to its deadly misfortune onto the school playground. Woe to the nesting ground bee minding her own beeswax on the soccer field.
Watching the pollinators work our humble nectar and pollen circuit is mesmerizing. This month, a new episode of Nature presents the genesis of a British man’s bee obsession. My Garden of a Thousand Bees features a veteran wildlife cameraman, restless and seeking refuge from the pandemic, filming the bees in his small urban garden. Soon he’d catalogued over 60 species of bees and even be-friended an individual bee throughout its entire lifespan.
More Bees Than People
Approximately 400 species of bees are native to South Dakota. When we visualize bees, many of us default to the iconic: honeybees and bumblebees. “The archetype we have in our minds is that a bee is black, yellow, fuzzy and kind of largish,” says Amanda Bachmann, Pesticide Education & Urban Entomology Field Specialist at the South Dakota State University Extension Regional Center in Pierre. But South Dakota bee species vary wildly. They can be bright metallic green or resemble tiny wasps. “Just because people don’t see insects in an area doesn’t mean they aren’t there,” says Bachmann. “If we increase areas of habitat, we can really do a lot to support the populations that exist in the margins.”
South Dakota’s wild and managed honeybees are chiefly threatened by habitat loss, agrochemicals, and parasites. According to the South Dakota Department of Agriculture’s Apiary Inspection Program, approximately 270 beekeepers are registered in the state, with about 30% producing commercial honey. Bret Adee is a partner in Adee Honey Farms with his brother Kelvin and father Richard. Adee Honey Farms has over 80,000 hives. Like many commercial apiarists, Adee Honey Farms trucks their bees to winter in California for the annual almond pollination season. Bees cross-pollinate crops like apples and blueberries, but Adee says honeybees also benefit auto-pollinated crops like sunflowers and soybeans. Adee cites a study from Dr. Dennis vanEngelsdorp, professor of entomology at the University of Maryland, that puts last year’s honeybee losses at around 44%. “When I was a young man, we’d think anything over 5% was a mismanagement problem,” says Adee. “Forty-four percent is crazy, if you consider a livestock business with 44% losses.” Adee says some of our agrochemicals weren’t screened properly for their impact on beneficial insects by the Environmental Protection Agency. “They approved some insecticides that were very detrimental to our beneficial insects that were very kind to humans,” says Adee. “It was going in the right direction, but didn’t look at the big enough picture.” Adee also says farm efficiency that destroys peripheral forage areas contributes to the stress on bees. “At one time, food like milkweeds was everywhere. Now, milkweeds are kind of hard to find.”
Bachmann is particularly worried about the vulnerability of unmanaged bees. “Not to discount whatsoever how difficult it is to be a beekeeper these days. It’s getting more expensive and more challenging,” says Bachmann. “But I do also try to get people to be more aware of the other 399 kinds of species. Honeybees tend to be active all season, we make sure they reproduce, we make more queens. Meanwhile, mason bees, longhorn bees, and bumblebees can be tied to only a certain subset of plants that may only be present in a restricted geographic range or even restricted time during the growing season. Bumblebees are like little flying panda bears as indicators for habitat loss and perhaps for endangered and extinction rates for our native bee species.”
Integrated Pest Management
The South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources proposes and enforces the policies and sets the statutes for pesticide application, while Bachmann and the Extension Service provide the training and education for application that is safe and effective for both applicators and the environment. Bachmann’s position extends to assisting folks in the identification of insects and the best practices for Integrated Pest Management (IPM), both large- and small-scale.
IPM targets the life cycles of pests and how they interact with the environment, from farms to homes and backyards. “In a lot of cases, the way you solve your pest issue is perhaps not with a chemical intervention, but with something else, like maybe changing your planting date of your crop,” says Bachmann. “I try to give our pesticide applicators at least an introduction to IPM concepts, because while they’re the ones making the pesticide applications, they’re not necessarily the people who are making the decisions about what pesticides to apply. We do make sure that when we’re talking to agronomists and crop consultants, that we cover IPM a lot, because for things like plant diseases especially, it’s not always a fungicide that’s going to solve your problem. We’re actually breeding crops to be resistant to certain diseases.”
One issue Bachmann runs into for laypeople is what constitutes a pesticide. “It’s so important to be really cognizant of what pesticide product you’re using,” says Bachmann. “A lot of people, when they use the word pesticide, they don’t realize that covers insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, everything that ends in -cide. People tell me, ‘Oh, I don’t spray pesticides. I only use herbicides.’ But herbicides are pesticides.”
When it comes to wasps, folks often reach for the Ortho or Raid. “Homeowners ask, ‘Well, I’ve got these wasps that are getting into my house. How do I kill them?’ Well, first step is preventing them from getting into your house,” says Bachmann. “A lot of people want to know, ‘What can I spray?’ But that’s not the best first question. I try to get people to walk it back, and figure out what really is the root of the pest issue, and then how can we best manage it. Definitely, pesticides do end up being a solution in some cases, but they’re not always the first thing that we reach for.”
Adee says most of the agricultural producers he’s met are cognizant and receptive to IPM, but it may require patience and pivoting. “Sometimes you just get caught in a hurry,” says Adee. “But you’ve got to look at the stress of the immediate compared to the long-term. Some years it’s harder to implement than others. What blew up this year was spider mites, but we got calls from very conscientious producers to help us work with them on controlling spider mites so they could protect their soybean crops and we could protect our honeybees.”
South Dakota participates in BeeCheck and DriftWatch, a voluntary registration service where pesticide applicators, beekeepers and crop growers can map and communicate spraying, hive and crop locations. Adee says he has a lot of hope and optimism for producers who are harnessing creativity into regenerative agriculture. He references the Jorgensen Ranch near Ideal, South Dakota, winners of the 2015 Leopold Conservation Award. “Their efforts in conservation are exceptional. And what really inspires me is the soil health movement and the South Dakota Grassland Coalition. We’ve got top-notch producers in South Dakota who really get the value of whole ecosystems. I think we’re starting to get the changes we need for bees that will benefit all agriculture.”
Bachmann urges backyarders to educate themselves on identification as the first step toward pest management that doesn’t encourage habitat decline. “A lot of these native bee species are not going to be aggressive,” says Bachmann. “Stinging is not their first line of defense. Honeybees, bumblebees, social wasps, they’re protecting resources so they kind of come out swinging if their nest is disturbed. But our ground-nesting solitary bees, you’re not encountering them necessarily near their nest, and that nest is not a thing full of resources that they’re defending aggressively.” She cites resources like the Ask Extension at Extension.sdstate.edu and garden lines where users can submit pictures and questions, as well as citizen science apps like iNaturalist and BugGuide.
Like Adee, Bachmann is encouraged by increasing interest in pollinators and pollinator conservation. “Rotary groups and community volunteers want to get grants to build pollinator gardens,” says Bachmann. “It’s not just scientists who think its important for their communities. I think that’s a real success.” Plans for a state bumble bee survey are in the works. Adee’s wishlist includes beneficial plant selection on hunting and Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) land. Bachmann says neighboring states do more with roadside pollinator habitat initiatives. She’d like to reach a point where insects like the Rusty Patched Bumble Bee and American Burying Beetle, the only insect currently on the Critically Endangered Species List, generate interest and action.
“Right now the biggest incentive is self-interest, obviously,” says Adee. “But the more you look at the positives of maintaining landscapes that produce more nectar and pollen for our beneficial insects, and the value of our beneficial insects to us and agriculture, the more we realize we need them.”
Nature My Garden of a Thousand Bees premieres Wednesday, Oct. 20, at 7pm (6 MT) on SDPB1 and SDPB.org