POLLINATOR PARTNERSHIP

Bee Friendly Gardening (BFG) helps people play a bigger role in the health of pollinators and the planet. More than 85% of U.S. households have an outdoor living space; by converting these areas to much-needed habitat, together we can have a big impact. Your space can provide support to pollinators and other wildlife - no lawn, garden, balcony, or window box is too small!
By joining the Bee Friendly Gardening Member community, you are connecting to a larger network of Bee Friendly Farming Certified producers, supporting farmers, and building recognition for the good work they are doing for our pollinators. The Bee Friendly programs help farmers and gardeners incorporate affordable, simple, science-based guidelines, like offering nutrition and habitat for bees and implementing integrated pest management strategies. Bee Friendly Gardening Members are an essential part of keeping our pollinators healthy and food supply abundant.

Our goal is to support teachers, administrators, guardians, youth groups, after school programs, amongst others, in guiding students through adiscovery process that will increase students’ understanding in science, math, and language arts by connecting them to plants, pollinators, food, and gardens by (potentially) creating habitat for pollinators. We say "potentially” because building a school habitat garden requires a real commitment.  Planting the garden habitat is relatively easy, but making it grow, thrive, and survive several seasons is a commitment and a challenge.
We believe that getting children outside and into the garden is the most valuable part of this experience. But we are also realistic and we urge you to be, too.
More than anything, we want you to use the Bee Smart™ School Garden Kit to help expose your students to new ideas about food, wildlife, and plants. It should also help students choose behaviors that support their own health, the health of the planet, and all its plants and animals. And we want the experience to be one that gives you fun, easy, and effective tools to teach and support your curriculum objectives.

The mysterious disappearance of bees, called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), is a growing threat to Honey Bees, the mainstay of pollination services in agriculture. The North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC), a tri-national coalition dedicated to promoting the health of all pollinators partners with different organizations to perform research for improving the health of honey bees and reversing the threats they face. The Honey Bee Health Improvement Project focuses on ways to help Honey Bees and beekeepers. In the absence of Colony Collapse Disorder, this task force will seek out and secure funding for innovative and important work to understand and promote genetic stock improvements, understand and promote best management practices for commercial beekeeping, and promote forage opportunities for colonies on public and private land. Click here (http://pollinator.org/PDFs/OPERAReport.pdf) to read the latest compendium from the OPERA Research Center on the latest bee health in Europe.

The U.S. Bee Buffer Project is looking for farmers, ranchers and orchardists in Ohio to take part in creating a foraging habitat of pollen and nectar sources — a Bee Buffer zone — small plots of land dedicated to honey bee health.

Ten years ago the U.S. Senate's unanimous approval and designation of a week in June as "National Pollinator Week" marked a necessary step toward addressing the urgent issue of declining pollinator populations.

Bee Friendly Farming is an online, self-certification program created by Kathy Kellison and other experts (Sam Droege, Mace Vaughn, Dennis vanEnglesdorp, Marla Spivak, Randy Oliver, Robbin Thorp, Karen Strickler, Gerry Miller, Jeff Anderson, Phil Giles, and Gene Brandi).

The number of monarchs making the annual migration has plummeted in recent years, but Ohioans have stepped forward in unprecedented numbers to make a difference. Support for monarchs starts with one thing that everyone can do: plant for monarchs!

Honey bees living near corn fields can have multiple routes of exposure to pesticides. Exposure may be by contact (dust, soil), by ingestion (pollen/nectar/water), or a combination of these exposure routes. The focus of this discussion is exposure via dust from the planting of treated corn seeds.
Corn planting throughout the U.S. and Canada typically occurs from late April to early May when the fields are sufficiently dry to enter with equipment. Corn seeds currently in use by farmers are very frequently treated with pesticide(s). Under humid conditions, treated seeds may become sticky and require a lubricant/fluency agent to move effectively through pneumatic planting equipment; talc and/or graphite are frequently used as seed flow lubricants in the larger pneumatic planters to ensure uniform seed drop. Abrasion of treated seed coatings can result in particles containing pesticide residues mixing with the fluency agents to produce a contaminated “dust” (aka fugitive dust), which can be released by the air exhaust system during planting or subsequent cleaning of the equipment. This “dust” has the potential to be deposited on soil, water, and flowers within and adjacent to corn fields where foraging honey bees, and other pollinators, may be exposed to the pesticide(s).
In 2008, a large number of honey bee colonies in Germany were affected by the drift of dust generated through the abrasion of treated seed during planting. Since that time there has been concern regarding the extent to which one class of pesticides, i.e., neonicotinoid insecticides, can move off-site and represent a route of exposure for bees foraging in the vicinity of fields where neonicotinoid-treated seeds have been planted. Although the incident in Germany was attributed to a combination of factors (i.e., lack of a suitable sticking agent for the pesticide on the seed, seeding equipment that vents upward, dry windy conditions and an abundance of oilseed rape (canola) in full bloom immediately adjacent to the fields being planted), subsequent research (Krupke et al. 2012; Tapparo et al. 2012) has indicated that fugitive dust may still represent a route of exposure even where suitable sticking agents are used and seeding equipment vents downward.

The BeeMD is a diagnostic tool to help beekeepers identify honey bee health issues. The BeeMD will be used in multiple modalities including computers and handheld devices such as tablets and smart phones. The information on The BeeMD will be continually evolving and updated as science and technology add new information to the ability to diagnose and understand hive health.

Our ecoregional planting guides, Selecting Plants for Pollinators, are tailored to specific areas of the United States. You can find out which ecoregion you live in and get your free guide by entering your zip code below.