Very inspirational. When people talk about whole system farming and restoring natural ecosystems, it’s shocking how often this subject is left out. I can’t think of another RU-vid channel that does it better. I love that you called out the garden centers for playing their part in the declining native pollinator population.
I've just found this channel, 1st video. However, you're absolutely right @jackturner, no one else talks about this in such a complete and easy to understand way. It's easy to forget you can apply deeper thought, observation and scientific method to learn things no one would believe possible. The intuition here it most impressive. There's always more going on than meets the eye and it's beautiful to see more great minds unlocking the tools that have surrounded us always.
Thank you for sharing this extremely important information about native bees and specialist pollinators. Not only can honeybees outcompete native bees for forage, but research is now showing that disease spill over from managed honey bee colonies is a huge risk to native bee populations as well. Dr. Sheila Colla does research in this area.
I'm trying to do this same thing down here in Texas, and focusing on providing homes for them, as well as any plants they need to raise their young. It's a huge subject!! I too, would LOVE to see the same information provided by nurseries!!! How grand THAT would be!! Especially for the general public who would like to do this same thing, but don't have the time or inclination to do the research to fine tune their gardens for this purpose. They just want to walk into the nurseries and pick out the pretty colors. If they had the choice to "pick the pretty colors" which are helpful to specialist bees, or pollinators, they would gladly do so. We do need sections in the nurseries which give us these choices! Keep up the good work you guys!!! Excellent video!!!!!!!!!
Thanks Summer! We are truly blessed to have you share your knowledge. I doubt very much that most of us every had a clue about 'specialist' pollinators. It's a joy to hear you explain these subjects to us and to see your love and enthusiasm for plants and the wildlife that depend on them. Thanks again for another inspiring video.
Thank you for taking the time to both watch and share a nice comment, Ron. Glad to share this under-reported information and trust that it'll inspire others to plant for their native and specialist pollinators and host plants for native insects.
I thought I was an environmentalist and I didn't even know what a specialist pollinator was. I have a lot of work to do this spring in my garden! You are an excellent educator and communicator. Thank you so much.
Amazing info. If garden centers could just make it easier for us to find the plants and info on specialist pollinators and their plants, gardeners would be happy to oblige. It shouldn’t be this difficult especially now!
Thank you for covering such an important issue. It’s critical that we focus on managing for at risk pollinators. Cornell is having a conference mid November and one of the presenters focus is designing habitat for at risk pollinators. Bernd Blossey, an invasive species researcher, will also be presenting. Hope to see you there: November 14-18th, 2022 | Ithaca, NY The CCE Agricultural, Food & Environmental Systems In-service brings
This content is sooo interesting (even for someone like me living in a tiny apt in a big city at the other side of the planet) and so educational that it should be sponsored by governments all over the world. You do this hard long time work just to allow those tiny beings to survive, while the entire planet is busy with bombs and wars... you give all of us hope. Thank you, very much! And btw, what an extraordinary beautiful transformation you've done in this land! Amazing!
This year I planted mint plants that I propagated from the mint that I purchased at the Asian grocery store. When they flowered, I found that there were dozens of different species of pollinators swarming the blooms. I was astounded. I also have bee balm, yarrow, butterfly bush, etc... The mint was the most popular, with spotted bee balm in a close second. Who knew that regular ordinary mint would provide so much to the local pollinator species here in Southwest Ohio. Very wonderful surprise.
Most people don’t have a large lot but they shouldn’t be discouraged. Even a few small pots on a deck or balcony can make a big and positive difference for our specialist pollinators. Your segment on this is important. Thanks for tacking the issue.
Thanks for encouragement for others. Much appreciated. I think the stat of "five flowers for 1 baby bee" is VERY encouraging, because that seems achievable even for small plot, rooftop garden, or community garden.
Great Great Message Summer, we need more people on board, and I agreed, nurseries should promote the plants for specialists with true native, sometimes can be confusing for average gardener like myself. thank you for explaining. Doug Tallamy book abut Oaks was the one who got me so curious about the garden beyond plants, and how to help other living things and help ourselves at the same time. Thank you.
I loved this video and I feel inspired! I've been interested in supporting local flora and fauna for a long time, down to the small insects. It is my dream to one day be in a similar situation to you and cover the land in native ecotype plants.
I know then satisfaction you speak of when providing pollen and nectar for the pollinators. Fantastic video with LOTS of important information. Keep up the great work!
I love this - thank you for using your platform to promote such critical change! I am in the process of restoring my suburban yard in Ohio. I hope that as it matures my neighbors will become inspired to replace their lawns as well.
I had no idea some bees made the ground their home, until one stung my foot as I walked around. Thats also when I learned I am allergic to them. Despite this, I absolutely love watching them going around my Crepe Myrtle blooms. I didnt know all this and will also be doing my research for Florida native garden for the Specialists. Thank you, how I hate walking into these nurseries and seeing extremely invasive plants being sold, I am dealing with a few that previous owners planted, and even one variety I planted.
honestly getting into this whole topic in the last few months, glad that i've always been extremely determined to find native plants or cultivars only for my garden. to a small extent, the whole way "save the bees" just gets plastered with the non-native honeybee, is really irritating. like i was showing my mom a month or two ago at the garden center two plants, one nativar hyssop, and one random sage from europe, both full of purple flowers, yet on the sage whatever, there were a few honeybees, and like, not much else, meanwhile the hyssop literally had 20 bees of at least 10 different species on each plant. planted it and within a day found the first ever sweat-bee i've ever seen in my life. all this kinda refueled my passion for really trying to find every native plant lol. lucky for me, garden centers near me do have at least some selection of natives and nativars, and one a few towns away is literally ONLY native plants, and a botanical garden, so glad i found that. it is SO HARD TO FIND SOME NATIVE PLANTS THOUGH drives me insane. also looking at that link you mentioned, i really need to find get some willows tbh
Thrips are specialist pollinators, huh? It's gonna take a lot to convince me to like thrips lol. All jokes aside, this is SO HELPFUL and SO IMPORTANT! I just bought my first house and I've been following this channel closely and doing a lot of research to optimize the ecological impact of my gardening in the coming years. Thanks so much for doing this, Summer! I'm glad you're doing a full series on this
Hi Summer. Just wanted to thank you for all your videos. You have an amazing amount of knowledge that you share with us and the videos are really well produced. Thank you!
I’m so happy you’re doing this! I’m obsessed with native insects now. Did you know that butterfly bushes actually harm native insects, because certain species of butterfly mistake them and lay their eggs on them? Then the caterpillars emerge and can’t feed, and die. It upsets me because garden centers advertise this as a “pollinator friendly” plant.
Thank you so much. I’m always looking for New York specialist pollinator resources. You’re the only channel I’ve found so far so thank you for mentioning the studies and names.
Really really well driven conversation to show some of the deeper and more mysterious things you can focus on in your native ecosystems. It can be hard to show a general audience some of the deeper science and observations that can be focused on in a garden. Where you can design a whole environment. Also beautiful inspiration for the more experienced gardeners since we all need more challenges and experiments to try so we can dial in the most regenerative systems for our local areas.
You're an amazing inspo and I love the advocacy you do. I'm attending The Conway School (Western Mass) as a graduate student of ecological landscape design in September, and I'd love to see you as a visiting lecturer or design client. We're 1000% aligned
It seems that these plants come up magically. We have several of those flowering plants shown, if Nature is left alone. It is very enjoyable to gather samples and press them, but leaving the rest for about 4 kinds of bees here. We rarely see a honey bee any more. They are up in the trees and bushes, blossoming in Spring, many are exhausted but alive on the ground stinging our dog and on balcony flower boxes and then they vanish. Larger bees, tiny bees and those bees which you have filmed have taken their place. The Honey Bees seem to be somewhere else in October. The City didn't cut down these flowering 'weeds' until now(Oct'22). During the 3 previous drought years, they were cut extremely low, in Summer. Then grass and everything got scorched. Still, this year, those cute purple flowering plants were cut down now, but why? The plants got some strength from one rainstorm recently and had more flowers than in all of Summer. Some of us would not mind if every piece of available ground in this City, could remain wild, which is another word for the native plants. Really enjoyed this video. I planted a wild plant from a rough lawn area, in a shared flower box. I thought that it was a good candidate for horrible conditions and it's leaves were fern-like. . On the unwatered lawn, it got 4-6 inches tall, but in the flower box, which I watered, it got over a foot tall and stalks came up above that, with tiny purple flowers on them. That was a nice surprise and I did see one bee visit them one day.
In my state we recently lost the battle to save bell bowl prairie and its inhabitant rusty patched bumblebee from destruction by the Rockford airport. I was so angry about this. Angry about being helpless against the monied powers rhat be. I don't know why Illinois is called the prairie state, when cleanly, they don't give a fig about the prairie. I love your idea of a specialist bee section at garden centers. I dont trust any of my local garden centers not to use harmful substances on their plants, so i order from Prairie Nursery in Wisconsin. I'll have to suggest your idea to them with my next order. And I'll mention it to my Wild Ones chapter. This was a great, informative video. I just wush the subject wasnt so esoteric; people need to know and care about this!
My husband and I love watching the Flock videos and this one struck a chord with me. When you spoke about pleading with hr garden centers I wanted to tear up a bit. I've been trying to garden more and more for wildlife and I too get so excited when I see a different type of bee. Sometimes you feel like you're alone kn an island when you are trying to bring in wildlife while those around you spary to keep life away. Thank you Flock for all that you do!!! We are just north of you in Canada. :)
I have looked up natural/ native flowers. And usually you get the same plants named for half of the country. And while they may be in your area many are not the best choice and it’s hard to find information on what is, much less finding the actual plants.
If you want honeybees and for them to not bother your specific native bee gardens then put the hives close to that garden and point them the other way. They don't really collect super close to home, but I bet they'd still hit your meadow pretty hard. Also, honeybees don't really collect from tons of flowers because their proboscis just doesn't fit (ex trumpet flower, bee balm, etc). They don't like variety so they'd probably not really like your pretty flower gardens anyway they'd rather collect from like a huge field of clover for example. Most of my tea garden, actual garden, and flower gardens just don't get too many honey bees because of this, but I love seeing all the native bees on it all. I have 4 honeybee hives and they'd much rather collect from the neighboring cow fields clover patch than anything I grow.
This is such an important topic! I recommended this book on a couple channels so I'm not sure if I mentioned it here. I recently bought this one; Pollinators of Native Plants, by Heather Holm. Thanks for this video and keep up the good content!
Have you talked with Evan Abramson at Landscape Interactions? He has written pollinator plans for various towns and regions in the northeast he does a lot of work around specialist pollinators. Might be a good connection, someone who can give you more information that you can share with your viewers. thanks for the video!
20 years ago, I transplanted an Aesclepias tuberosa root and plant from an eastern Ohio farm field composed of deep, heavy clay soil to my suburban flower bed in piedmont region of the Mid-Atlantic that has thin granite rock dust soil. I always let everything seed out naturally, so that seed is carried on the wind and lands where it may. Every year, the mother plant flowers 3 to 4 weeks before its babies that have self seeded. I have observed that the mother root blooms is 3 to 4 weeks before the arrival of the monarch butterflies. But when the babies bloom, that is when the monarchs arrive here. This observation is amazing to me and I am curious as to the botanical explanation for it and will be looking into further. Have you heard of this phenomenon or know its terminology? I love your videos and all that you have shared. Thank you!
Butterfly Bushes: I like them but....When I first started working on my property I kept thinking how I needed to put these in. However, I was also the gardener for my next door neighbor who has two large ones along a shared fence line. I still maintain those for her (she is not a pruner) but I noticed that although they blossom profusely I have never seen insects go to them over the past ten years. OK maybe wrong ones etc. But I think this is an example of when something is purchased based on very simplified marketing. I'm not going to plant any of my own even if I can find the right one that works. Hers look nice and tower many feet above the fence every year for me to esthetically enjoy. I'll just fine something else to add to my pollinator collection that I can also enjoy.
I LOVE this video, many native bees, wasps, flies, butterflies and moths are endangered due to a lack of native plants. I encourage people to check out the Xerces Society which is north america's society for invertebrate conservation!
Thank you! I travel to the Plantsman over an hour away to get my plants. We have a few places more local to Syracuse that I can find some native plants; but often more native hybrids.
I never knew there were so many different pollinators. Not just honey bees. It's entertaining to watch all the different ones that come to this fascinating plant. Try "African blue basil" one of the two best pollinator attractors on the planet. It's a sterile hybrid of two other Basil plants. Must be started with a cutting.
9:05 I just recently started letting blue violets loose in my yard in Michigan! Jarrods research on bees and the iNaturalist app are my obsessions lately
I am finding half frozen or asleep wasps etc the last few days. The sun is not strong enough to make it really warm. Some of them got knocked into my rain barrels, other containers that caught last 2 rains. Then not able to fly out again. With winter coming I work just as hard at botteling the rainwater for winter flushing of toilet, washing out buckets, shoe soles etc. so I find them daily. In summer it is to keep gardens healthy but now it is with power outages in mind. The despised earwigs are still active though. I hate when the thick clothing has to come out of the closet. You are not thrilled either no doubt.
Awesome expose! My rule of thumb is to observing the native bees themselves as to what they like. Some of the specialists only show when certain trees are in bloom. I just happened to have planted some of their favorites by buying nursery grown natives. I'm in zone 9b, (SWFL) and I must admit to not be as well versed in the native species as I would like. It is such a joy when I see a wide variety of native bees working feverishly away on my bushes! Some day I will join a native plant society so I can help them with their native garden projects to gain confidence in propagating some onmy own.
Thank you for this video. I've been giving thought to this topic the last couple years. I live in a vastly different climate of the Black Hills but this year I tried planting a few perennials that were more native. Its not an easy task to find actual native plants, most are cultivars with at times gaudy man bred colors. If I was a native pollinator I would not be interested in them. This next season I am going to try and make more of a concerted effort into finding natives.
thinking about your neighbors with bees, maybe plant out lots and lots of asters (fleabane seems like a fav for my local honeybees) and generalist-friendly flowers and trees (crabapple, chestnut, serviceberry, hazel, etc.) for the whole season that are planted in the direction of that neighbor to give more space for your specialists closer to your home? seems like you have a a whole lot of flowers available for everything, so giving high nectar plants that natives don't care about to honeypot the honeybess might work. love the concept of pushing native nurseries, watching your channel it seems like you all are always about 3mon from just starting your own
A big argument for 100%grass fed meat animals is that these grassy fields can support ground dwelling insects, where as grain farming (including soybeans lentils) wipes out these insects. Also, most US nut farms totally “Nuke” the ground so that their sweeping harvest machines can work. Italian companies make a nut harvest machine that spreads a tarp around The base of a tree, shakes the nuts off, and then moves onto the next tree, enabling farmers to have a healthy ground cover that builds the soil and supports a variety of pollinators which also help the Nut trees get pollinated.
Thank you so much for this perfectly timed info, as many of us are planning our gardens now. Your botanical knowledge is impressive and so valuable and, along with Edible Acres, I have learned so much about ecosystem gardening. I already have a few specialist pollinator plants in my small garden but I will find room for a couple of native plants. Nice job Sander, for capturing the beautiful flowing pond mist.
Like Doug Tallamy says, plant for the specialists and the generalists will take care of themselves. And never worry about honey bees, They're not native or endangered. You have such luxury with the lake. I have set up a small container water garden and love Pickerelweed....which grows so well I divide it and guerrilla garden it around town in our storm water ponds.
Pickerelweed is an awesome specialist pollinator plant here, so we started to plant up some plugs here around Half Lake. Thanks for mentioning that and Doug's sage advice.
Thanks for this interesting video (and also all the other videos you share are amazing) 😊😊 I wanted to ask you (or anyone reading this) if you know about some works about specialist pollinators centered on European flora/fauna.
Super interesting Summer. Question- do you have to clean the bee houses in the spring? Same with bird houses. Just curious 🤔 Thanks and as always beautiful video guys👏👏👏❣️
hey! i bought 14 flower seeds on amazon that are native and ive foraged about 6 species from a small nearby forest. Im planning to use these as a native pollinator garden, supporting specialist pollinators as well, and my dad, however, uses fertilizer on our grass. Ive already told him to not use it around my garden, but will that still have an effect on the bees that are foraging and nesting near my window or anywhere else nearby in the lawn?
Yeah this is Jane I love your show I'm going to try to get more I do a park I have 30 gardens out there in Pennsylvania and I've been doing it for about 18 years out there and I'm going to try to get more of your type flowers in there so hopefully helps okay talk to you later thank you bye-bye
Absolutely, considering spaces for pollinators to nest, like not mulching beds heavily, as mentioned here; leaving snags and dead/decaying wood is a plus, and providing mason bee homes, etc. really help.
An important video! A pity I can't view it without adverts every five minutes in spite of having just dowloaded total adblock. RU-vid is becomming real drag because of this.
How about creating free digital guides available to followers, general public, community gardens, nurseries, etc, etc that spread the word in an ready reference format with calls to action!!
The biggest treat to native bees, by far, are... other bees! My area is being invaded by asian wasp for years, and no matter what we plant, or not, or even policy action on it bt killing hives, arent doing much, just retarding a bit the mass killing.
you need more volume if you want to tweak and make any sort of difference - think a few acres of clover and other acres with more diversity - plow and add soil amendments and sow - you don't havee to overthink it all too much - the beds you have now are just not enough to make a real difference
That is the 'End of Bees' video I co-produced in the Dominican Republic when Colony Collapse Disorder was first identified. Exhilarating to say the least!
Once again, we revert back to the pollinator garden. This was a nice informative video, but I have been patiently waiting to see other areas. You have given us glimpses of the gazebo in the raised bed garden area. No video. You mention planting in the interstitial area, no video. You mention deer browse, no video of the forested area, or my favorite huge oak. Last year, we got tour videos. This year, nada. I would like to see progress on the orchard, no video. I really have enjoyed the green house video and the fall planter video because they were new content. But I am really getting frustrated. And I am trying to be nice about communicating this frustration. I think you should know.
Hi Lisa, we try to balance our life of our regular work, filming/editing, working the land, and of course-down time. As you (hopefully) understand, that can get quite a lot. It's full time jobs on top of full time jobs. Especially because I personally am only here half time and film another channel ru-vid.com as well. Not sure by the comment that you can appreciate how much effort that all is. But as an aside, I do think you may have missed the hour long summer tour we did last month, because it's there where we give a fuller tour of the land, which covers the orchard, the interstitial, the renovations, the memorial garden and more. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-H0ZSlp52IW4.html
You're a smart woman. Frankly I find your revealing clothing when you are filming at your property concerning. Women are exploited sexually in our society all the time to sell products. To me it seems like you are using sexuality to attract viewers to your site. You diminished women's value as equals and make them and yourself a sex object by doing so. Pat
Hi Pat, thanks for your concern, but I have no problem with my own body and with how I wear (or don't wear clothes). I feel comfortable and empowered with what I wear. In the fashion world, when I was working there more full-time, I art-directed many of my own films and shoots, and I haven't felt exploited in any way in the industry, even though I know many of my friends have. In fact, I think by being in the industry, it has made me a stronger, more confident person. As a young girl, I drew a lot and loved drawing people's forms, which goes to say-nude forms, so I don't have the same-sometimes over-sexualized or Puritanical views of bodies as many of us typically do.
HAIRY MOUNTAIN MINT Pycnanthemum verticillatum var. pilosum and Pycnanthemum virginianum . These will total amaze and excite. 40 years of gardening never seen so many species of wasp and such on any one plant. The kindness of Bumble bees, so cool and crazy busy. Check for a tip to buy some... Prairie moon nursery rocks in Wisconsin