Burlington County Parks Naturalist Jen Bulava spoke at the Mt. Laurel Library about the dangers facing pollinators, specifically bees.
Members of the Mt. Laurel Green Team were asking locals to “Bee Aware” when they hosted Burlington County Parks naturalist Jen Bulava at the Mt. Laurel Library to speak about the dangers facing insect pollinators, specifically bees.
Bulava spoke at length on pollinators and their effect on the world’s environment, economy and food supply, noting insects pollinate 85 percent of the world’s flowering plants, and 35 percent of the world’s food crops need some form of pollination.
Specifically focusing on the importance of bees, Bulava said out of the top 100 crops that produce 90 percent of the world’s food, bees pollinate 70 percent of those crops, according to a 2016 study by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations.
“Pollinators and crucial to not only our food supply, but also the functioning of the natural world,” Bulava said.
However, as Bulava explained to visitors at the library, bee colonies in the United States have decreased over the past 75 years, from 6 million in 1944, to 3 million in 1980, to around 2.5 million today due to changes in agriculture such as an increase in herbicides, lack of crop rotation and use of fertilizer instead of cover crops.
Bulava said the problem was compounded in recent years due to the condition known as Colony Collapse Disorder, in which adult worker bees leave their hive and disappear, abandoning their queen, young bees and eggs in a matter of months or even days.
According to Bulava, recent research shows a correlation in the rise of Colony Collapse Disorder to the increase of an insecticide known as Imidacloprid since 1994, which Bulava said coincided with a prolonged weakening of bees’ immune systems over time as the insecticide builds up in flowers and crops to which the bees are continually exposed.
With the insecticide common in several turf, ornamental and residential lawn and garden care products, Bulava cautioned locals to be aware of its potential effects on pollinators.
“Insects have a negative connotation, and it certainly overwhelmingly applies to bees,” Bulava said. “I know when I ask kids to name an insect they don’t like, they tend to name bees before they say even say mosquito, and that’s really bad. We need to change that.”
For residents looking to make more of a difference on a local level and help pollinators and bees through their own gardens, Bulava offered the following tips:
• Choose native plants rather than ornamentals that produce little or no pollen or nectar.
• Leave some small patches of un-mulched soil where native bees can nest in the ground
• Provide water in shallow birdbaths or dishes where pollinators can easily land.
• Avoid the use of pesticides and encourage the use of birds or other insect predators to fight pests.
• Use a variety of flowering plants in gardens, including those that bloom through spring and fall, annuals and perennials, fruits, vegetables and plants that are yellow, blue, pink and purple that are the most attractive to bees.
• Use flowers that attract native bees such as hyssop skullcap, Indian hemp, common selfheal, blue verbena, common milkweed, flattop goldenrod, Palespike lobelia, false foxglove, Narrow-leaved mountain mint, sweet goldenrod, spotted Joe-pye weed and broad-leaved ironweed.
• Plant herbs such as sage, mints, oregano, lavender, catnip, fennel, rosemary, thyme and bee balm.
• Plant fruits and vegetables such as tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, watermelons, gourds, peppers and cucumbers.
Also at the event was local beekeeper and Mt. Laurel resident Joel Sternin, who provided a free tasting of honey his bees had produced.
Sternin stressed the importance of protecting local bee populations by not disturbing small swarms of bee that locals might see near their homes this time of year in areas along fences, in trees or in bushes.
Sternin said such swarms simply mean bees from another hive left to start their own, and local beekeepers will gladly come collect them.
“They’re not aggressive because they don’t have any food and they don’t have any babies to protect … if you leave them alone and call a beekeeper, we’ll come collect it and you’re helping because now a new hive will get started,” Sternin said.
